How to remove untracked files in git

Take a branch, where we have made some changes and added new files. However, if we reach a point where we no longer want these changes, we can reset the changes using:

git reset --hard

The code above will remove the changes in files that already are under version control. The untracked files will still present even after the reset command is used.

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To remove untracked files, use the git clean command.

Let’s say we have one new file (file1.txt) and one new folder (folder1) with the fileinsidefolder.txt file added to our branch:

Dry run

Dry Run will tell you what files will be removed upon executing the clean command:

Always use -n before running the clean command as it will show you what files would get removed.

git clean -n 

This will only list the files, to list down the folders use

# Print out the list of files and directories which will be removed (dry run)
git clean -nd

Remove untracked files and folders

To remove untracked files using -f flag with git clean command:

# Delete the files from the repository
git clean -f

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To remove untracked files inside a subfolder use:

git clean -f folderpath 

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The untracked folders will now be deleted. If you want to delete untracked folders too, you can use the -d flag:

# To remove directories
git clean -fd

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To remove ignore files, use the -x flag:

# To remove ignored and non-ignored files
git clean -fx

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Summary

• Once the untracked files are deleted, they cannot be restored.
• Before running the git clean command, perform dry run to know what the are files that will be deleted.
• -n flag is used to perform dry run.
• -f flag is used to remove untracked files.
• -fd flag is used to remove untracked files and folders.
• -fx flag is used to remove untracked and ignored files.