How to clean node_modules folder of packages that are not in package.json?

Question

Assume I install project packages with npm install that looks into package.json for modules to be installed. After a while I see that I don\'t need

Answer 1

I have added few lines inside package.json:

"scripts": {
  ...
  "clean": "rmdir /s /q node_modules",
  "reinstall": "npm run clean && npm install",
  "rebuild": "npm run clean && npm install && rmdir /s /q dist && npm run build --prod",
  ...
}

If you want to clean only you can use this rimraf node_modules or rm -rf node_modules.

It works fine

Answer 2

You could remove your node_modules/ folder and then reinstall the dependencies from package.json.

rm -rf node_modules/
npm install

This would erase all installed packages in the current folder and only install the dependencies from package.json. If the dependencies have been previously installed npm will try to use the cached version, avoiding downloading the dependency a second time.

Answer 3

Due to its folder nesting Windows can’t delete the folder as its name is too long. To solve this, install RimRaf:

npm install rimraf -g

rimraf node_modules

Answer 4

The best article I found about it is this one: https://trilon.io/blog/how-to-delete-all-nodemodules-recursively

All from the console and easy to execute from any folder point.

But as a summary of the article, this command to find the size for each node_module folder found in different projects.

find . -name "node_modules" -type d -prune -print | xargs du -chs

And to actually remove them:

find . -name 'node_modules' -type d -prune -print -exec rm -rf '{}' \;

The article contains also instructions for windows shell.

Answer 5

Remove/Edit the packages that are not needed in package-lock.json (package names will be written under dependencies & devDependencies) and then

npm install

Answer 6

Have you tried npm prune?

it should uninstall everything not listed in your package file

https://npmjs.org/doc/cli/npm-prune.html