How to Delete Untracked Files in Git?

ByAnkush Jain| Last Updated On Saturday, Dec 07, 2019

Git

Disclaimer: I am a consultant at Amazon Web Services, and this is my personal blog. The opinions expressed here are solely mine and do not reflect the views of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Any statements made should not be considered official endorsements or statements by AWS.

In this post, we will understand how can we delete untracked files present in the git repository. To understand what are Untracked Files? Refer to this - What are Untracked Files in Git?

Deleting Untracked Files

To delete Untracked Files from the repository, you can use git clean -f -d -x command. This will remove all untracked files and folders from the repository. This command also deletes the files which are ignored by .gitignore file, which eventually results in the fresh and initial state of your repository.

Important: Below commands will work only for the directories or sub-directories from where they have been executed. To apply this command to the whole repository, run it from the root folder.

Understand the below parameters:

• -n Don't remove anything, just show what would be deleted.
• -f Delete files forcefully.
• -d Consider untracked directories as well along with untracked files.
• -x Consider untracked files also that are ignored by .gitignore.

To view what files will be deleted before actually deleting them, you can use the below commands.

• git clean -n- List only untracked files except those ignored by .gitignore.
• git clean -n -d- List untracked files & folders except those ignored by .gitignore.
• git clean -n -x- List all untracked files including those ignored by .gitignore as well.
• git clean -n -d -x- List all untracked files & folders including those ignored by .gitignore as well.

To delete the files from the repository, use the below commands.

• git clean -f- Delete only untracked files except those ignored by .gitignore.
• git clean -f -d- Delete untracked files & folders except those ignored by .gitignore.
• git clean -f -x- Delete all untracked files including those ignored by .gitignore as well.
• git clean -f -d -x- Delete all untracked files & folders including those ignored by .gitignore as well.

You can also refer to this StackOverflow link to know more about - How to delete untracked files in Git?