How to Remove Local Untracked Files From Current Git Working Tree?

Last Updated : 21 Jun, 2024

When working on a Git repository, it’s common to create temporary files or directories that you no longer need. These untracked files can clutter your working tree and make it harder to focus on the changes that matter. Fortunately, Git provides simple commands to clean up these untracked files. This article will guide you through the process of removing local untracked files from your current Git working tree.

What Are Untracked Files in Git?

Untracked files are those files in your working directory that are not being tracked by Git. They have not been added to the staging area using the git add command, and therefore, are not part of any commit. These files can be newly created files, temporary files generated by your development tools, or any files that you haven't yet decided to include in version control.

Steps to Setup a Basic Project

Step 1: Create a folder named git

mkdir git

Step 2: Switch to the git folder and create a folder named files

cd git
mkdir files

Step 3: Create three files named tracked.txt, untracked.txt, and .gitignore in the git folder

touch tracked.txt untracked.txt .gitignore

Step 4: Create two files in the files folder names file1.txt and file2.txt

cd files
touch file1.txt file2.txt

Step 5: Create a .env file

touch .env

Step 6: Initialize an empty git repository using the following command

git init

Step 7: Add .env to the .gitignore file

Step 8: Add the tracked.txt and .gitignore files to the staging area using the following command

git add tracked.txt .gitignore

Let's go through each of the interactive commands one by one:

clean: Removes the untracked files and directories and quits.
filter by pattern: Lists all the files and directories that are going to be removed and asks the user for an input prompt in the form of a pattern to exclude files and directories from removal.
select by numbers: Lists all the files and directories that are going to be removed and asks the user for an input prompt in the form of numbers that indicate the file number to be excluded. The number can be comma-separated or separated by white space. Example: 5,8,9 or 5-9 or 5 8 9.
ask each: Allows the user to confirm each file that is going to be removed. Not as efficient as the above methods.
quit: Quits the interactive mode without cleaning.

Project Structure

The project structure will be similar to the below image.

Now that the basic project structure is set up, let's understand how untracked files are removed. Untracked files are those files that are absent from the latest snapshot of the git repository. We can remove untracked files from the current git working tree using the following command

git clean

No untracked files can be removed by running the git clean command without any flag. By running the git clean command without any flags, a fatal error is generated and explicitly asks us to mention a flag

List out the Files to be removed

To have a look at all the untracked files that will be removed, we can use the git clean command with the -n flag. This lists out all the files that are going to be removed using the git clean command.

git clean -n

By running the command in our repository we get:

List out the Files and Directories to be removed

To have a look at all the untracked files and untracked directories that will be removed, we can use the git clean command with the -n and -d flag. This lists out all the files and directories that are going to be removed using the git clean command.