How to clean untracked files in Git

· Category: Git

Short answer

Use git clean to remove untracked files and directories from your working directory.

Steps

  1. Preview what will be deleted:
git clean -n
  1. Remove untracked files:
git clean -f
  1. Remove untracked files and directories:
git clean -fd
  1. Remove ignored files too:
git clean -fdx

Tips

  • Always run with -n first to preview deletions.
  • git clean is irreversible; deleted files are not in Git.
  • Use -i for interactive mode to confirm each deletion.

Common issues

  • git clean does not touch tracked files; use git reset --hard for those.
  • Build artifacts and dependencies are common targets for cleaning.