GIT-CLEAN(1)

📦
version 2.56.0 · 25 versions
, in arch rolling

✨ git-clean(1) — the girlies' guide to yeeting untracked files 💅

okay so bestie, welcome to git-clean(1), your new favorite manual page 🎀 she lives in the git manual family, and she is literally about to help you clean up your working tree. no cap.

🌸 NAME 🌸

git-clean — remove untracked files from the working tree 🧹✨

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

git clean [-d] [-f] [-i] [-n] [-q] [-e <pattern>] [-x | -X] [--] [<pathspec>...]

that's the whole vibe check right there, bestie 💖

👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

okay so what does she actually do? she cleans your working tree by recursively removing files that are not under version control, starting from the current directory 🫶 think of her as that friend who comes over and just... starts throwing things away. iconic. terrifying. effective.

normally, only files unknown to Git get removed — that's the default, that's the lane she stays in. but if you specify the -x option, ignored files are also removed 😭 which is, for example, super useful to remove all build products. yes queen, wipe the whole build folder.

and if you give her any optional <pathspec>... arguments, only those paths that match the pathspec are affected 🎯 she's not gonna touch anything outside your little target zone.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -d — okay so normally, when no <pathspec> is specified, git clean will not recurse into untracked directories, because she's trying not to remove too much 🙈 specify -d to have her recurse into those directories as well. but listen: if a <pathspec> is specified, -d is irrelevant — all untracked files matching the specified paths (with exceptions for nested git directories mentioned under --force) will be removed. so like, it stops mattering. iykyk.
  • -f, --force — the safety latch 🔒 if the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set to false, git clean will refuse to delete files or directories unless given -f. and it gets spicier: Git will refuse to modify untracked nested git repositories (directories with a .git subdirectory) unless a second -f is given 😳 yes, two. double force. double the commitment.
  • -i, --interactive — show what would be done and clean files interactively 💅 see "Interactive mode" for details. and good news: the configuration variable clean.requireForce is ignored here, because this mode gives its own safety protection by going interactive. she's got her own seatbelt, bestie 🎀
  • -n, --dry-run — don't actually remove anything, just show what would be done 👀 literally a look-only mode, no touching. the configuration variable clean.requireForce is ignored here too, since nothing will be deleted anyway. so you can be nosy for free 🍓
  • -q, --quiet — be quiet 🤫 only report errors, but not the files that are successfully removed. she still tells you when things go wrong tho, because communication is key.
  • -e <pattern>, --exclude=<pattern> — use the given exclude pattern in addition to the standard ignore rules (see gitignore(5)) 🧚 so you're stacking your own rules on top of the usual ones.
  • -x — don't use the standard ignore rules (see gitignore(5)), but still use the ignore rules given with -e options from the command line 🔥 this allows removing all untracked files, including build products. this can be used (possibly in conjunction with git restore or git reset) to create a pristine working directory to test a clean build ✨ pristine. immaculate. that's the energy.
  • -X — remove only files ignored by Git 🌈 this may be useful to rebuild everything from scratch, but keep manually created files. so your handcrafted little guys stay safe 🫶

💀 INTERACTIVE MODE 💀

when the command enters the interactive mode, it shows the files and directories to be cleaned, and goes into its interactive command loop 🔁

the command loop shows the list of subcommands available, and gives a prompt What now> . in general, when the prompt ends with a single >, you can pick only one of the choices given and type return, like this:

*** Commands ***
    1: clean                2: filter by pattern    3: select by numbers
    4: ask each             5: quit                 6: help
What now> 1

you also could say c or clean above as long as the choice is unique 👑 abbreviations slay, ambiguity does not.

the main command loop has 6 subcommands — here they are, one by one:

✨ the subcommands ✨

  • clean — start cleaning files and directories, and then quit 🧹💨 that's it. that's the whole thing. go off.
  • filter by pattern — this shows the files and directories to be deleted and issues an Input ignore patterns>> prompt 🔍 you can input space-separated patterns to exclude files and directories from deletion. e.g. *.c *.h will exclude files ending with .c and .h from deletion. when you are satisfied with the filtered result, press ENTER (empty) to go back to the main menu 🎀
  • select by numbers — this shows the files and directories to be deleted and issues a Select items to delete>> prompt 🔢 when the prompt ends with double >> like this, you can make more than one selection, concatenated with whitespace or comma. also you can say ranges 👏 e.g. 2-5 7,9 to choose 2,3,4,5,7,9 from the list. if the second number in a range is omitted, all remaining items are selected — e.g. 7- to choose 7,8,9 from the list. you can say * to choose everything. also when you are satisfied with the filtered result, press ENTER (empty) back to the main menu 💖
  • ask each — this will start to clean, and you must confirm one by one in order to delete items 😭 please note that this action is not as efficient as the above two actions. it's giving careful and slow, but honest work.
  • quit — this lets you quit without doing any cleaning 🙈 no damage, no cleanup, we simply leave.
  • help — show brief usage of interactive git-clean 🫶 the built-in tutorial bestie.

🎀 CONFIGURATION 🎀

okay so heads up: everything below this line in this section is selectively included from the git-config(1) documentation. the content is the same as what's found there 📖 so it's a little guest appearance from another manpage.

  • clean.requireForce — a boolean to make git-clean refuse to delete files unless -f is given. defaults to true ⭐ so yeah, by default she's asking for the force flag. that's the whole personality of this config variable, and honestly? fair.

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

gitignore(5) — go read it, it's the ignore-rules lore you need 🌸

🌈 GIT 🌈

part of the git(1) suite 👑 one big happy family of tools.

and that's the page, bestie 💜 go forth, run git clean -n first like a responsible icon, and remember: with great -f comes great responsibility 😭✨

this page brought to you by Git 2.56.0, dated 2026-09-27 — mwah, stan the git suite 🎀💅

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