@rnattochdag Writing

til / save disk space by deleting unused node_modules

If you're like me and have a bunch of side projects, chances are that you also have a ton of node_modules folders taking up unnecessary space. I'm going to show you a command to delete all of them at once. Last time I used it I saved ~40 GB. I would recommend deleting all of them and then reinstalling in the projects you're actively developing. Start off with a clean slate.

# Use the command at you own risk
find . -name "node_modules" -type d -prune -exec rm -rf '{}' +

There's a lot to the command, but here's an explanation of each part to
demystify it.

  • find - A command that comes built-in with MacOS and Linux.
  • . - Look from this location
  • -name "node_modules" - Make sure the last component of the pathname matches node_modules
  • -type d - We are looking for a directory (d)
  • -prune - Stops find from descending into the folder, meaning that it won't
    look for node_modules inside node_modules and so on.
  • -exec rm -rf '{}' + - Runs the specified command, rm, with flags r (remove directory) and f (do not ask for confirmation no matter what the file permissions are). '{}' will be replaced by the pathname that's been found. + means that find will append all the file paths to a single command instead of running rm for each.

If you only want to find node_modules folders and display their disk size use
the following command.

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

There's also an npm command that you can use by running npx npkill if you
don't want to mess with terminal commands.