Clean untracked files in Git

Given I am a developer<br /> And I am working on a new branch in an existing project<br /> And during one of my commits I introduced a few files/folders<br /> And those files/folders are untracked (in .gitignore)<br /> And those files/folders are automatically generated (e.g. node_modules/ webpack_bundle.js)<br /> When I switch back to the main branch<br /> Then I see those files<br /> And I don't want to...

If you find yourself in the above situation, you may want to clean your untracked files. Git provides a command for that: git clean.

This command comes with a way to see which files/folders are going to be deleted (DRY RUN):

git clean -n

You may notice that the above command does not show any untracked directories. To add directories to that list use the -d switch:

git clean -dn

Alternatively you may choose to only remove files/dirs that are in .gitignore with the -X option:

git clean -X -dn

If you are ready to take action use the -f switch and remove the -n switch:

git clean -fd

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