REMOVAL(7)

💅 REMOVAL(7) 💅

✨ NAME ✨

Removal - Cleaning the slate 🧼💖 — yes bestie, this is the “how do I make npm disappear” page, and we’re gonna do it cute and thorough.

🌸 Synopsis 🌸

So sad to see you go. 😭

sudo npm uninstall npm -g

Or, if that fails, please proceed to more severe uninstalling methods. 🫡

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😭 More Severe Uninstalling 😭

Okay so usually, the above instructions are sufficient. That will remove npm, but leave behind anything you’ve installed. Lowkey important: npm is gone, but your installed stuff is still chilling. 👀

If that doesn’t work, or if you require more drastic measures, continue reading. 🫶

Note that this is only necessary for globally-installed packages. Local installs are completely contained within a project’s node_modules folder. Delete that folder, and everything is gone unless a package’s install script is particularly ill-behaved. 🫠

This assumes that you installed node and npm in the default place. If you configured node with a different --prefix, or installed npm with a different prefix setting, then adjust the paths accordingly, replacing /usr/local with your install prefix. 🔧

To remove everything npm-related manually:

rm -rf /usr/local/{lib/node{,/.npm,_modules},bin,share/man}/npm*

If you installed things with npm, then your best bet is to uninstall them with npm first, and then install them again once you have a proper install. This can help find any symlinks that are lying around: 🔍

ls -laF /usr/local/{lib/node{,/.npm},bin,share/man} | grep npm

Prior to version 0.3, npm used shim files for executables and node modules. To track those down, you can do the following: 🕵️‍♀️

find /usr/local/{lib/node,bin} -exec grep -l npm \{\} \; ;

💖 See also 💖

• npm help uninstall
• npm help prune

💖 Cute lil sign-off: this page is from NPM@11.17.0, dated June 2026, and it’s the REMOVAL(7) manual — periodt. Bye bestie! 🫶✨