---
title: npm-prune
section: 1

description: Remove extraneous packages

Synopsis

npm prune [[<@scope>/]<pkg>...]

Description

This command removes "extraneous" packages. If a package name is provided,
then only packages matching one of the supplied names are removed.

Extraneous packages are those present in the node_modules folder that are
not listed as any package's dependency list.

If the --omit=dev flag is specified or the NODE_ENV environment
variable is set to production, this command will remove the packages
specified in your devDependencies.

If the --dry-run flag is used then no changes will actually be made.

If the --json flag is used, then the changes npm prune made (or would
have made with --dry-run) are printed as a JSON object.

In normal operation, extraneous modules are pruned automatically, so you'll
only need this command with the --production flag. However, in the real
world, operation is not always "normal". When crashes or mistakes happen,
this command can help clean up any resulting garbage.

Configuration

omit

• Default: 'dev' if the NODE_ENV environment variable is set to
  'production', otherwise empty.
• Type: "dev", "optional", or "peer" (can be set multiple times)

Dependency types to omit from the installation tree on disk.

Note that these dependencies are still resolved and added to the
package-lock.json or npm-shrinkwrap.json file. They are just not
physically installed on disk.

If a package type appears in both the --include and --omit lists, then
it will be included.

If the resulting omit list includes 'dev', then the NODE_ENV environment
variable will be set to 'production' for all lifecycle scripts.

include

• Default:
• Type: "prod", "dev", "optional", or "peer" (can be set multiple times)

Option that allows for defining which types of dependencies to install.

This is the inverse of --omit=<type>.

Dependency types specified in --include will not be omitted, regardless of
the order in which omit/include are specified on the command-line.

dry-run

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Indicates that you don't want npm to make any changes and that it should
only report what it would have done. This can be passed into any of the
commands that modify your local installation, eg, install, update,
dedupe, uninstall, as well as pack and publish.

Note: This is NOT honored by other network related commands, eg dist-tags,
owner, etc.

json

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Whether or not to output JSON data, rather than the normal output.

• In npm pkg set it enables parsing set values with JSON.parse() before
  saving them to your package.json.

Not supported by all npm commands.

foreground-scripts

• Default: false unless when using npm pack or npm publish where it
  defaults to true
• Type: Boolean

Run all build scripts (ie, preinstall, install, and postinstall)
scripts for installed packages in the foreground process, sharing standard
input, output, and error with the main npm process.

Note that this will generally make installs run slower, and be much noisier,
but can be useful for debugging.

ignore-scripts

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

If true, npm does not run scripts specified in package.json files.

Note that commands explicitly intended to run a particular script, such as
npm start, npm stop, npm restart, npm test, and npm run-script
will still run their intended script if ignore-scripts is set, but they
will not run any pre- or post-scripts.

workspace

• Default:
• Type: String (can be set multiple times)

Enable running a command in the context of the configured workspaces of the
current project while filtering by running only the workspaces defined by
this configuration option.

Valid values for the workspace config are either:

• Workspace names
• Path to a workspace directory
• Path to a parent workspace directory (will result in selecting all
  workspaces within that folder)

When set for the npm init command, this may be set to the folder of a
workspace which does not yet exist, to create the folder and set it up as a
brand new workspace within the project.

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.

workspaces

• Default: null
• Type: null or Boolean

Set to true to run the command in the context of all configured
workspaces.

Explicitly setting this to false will cause commands like install to
ignore workspaces altogether. When not set explicitly:

• Commands that operate on the node_modules tree (install, update, etc.)
  will link workspaces into the node_modules folder. - Commands that do
  other things (test, exec, publish, etc.) will operate on the root project,
  unless one or more workspaces are specified in the workspace config.

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.

include-workspace-root

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Include the workspace root when workspaces are enabled for a command.

When false, specifying individual workspaces via the workspace config, or
all workspaces via the workspaces flag, will cause npm to operate only on
the specified workspaces, and not on the root project.

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.

install-links

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

When set file: protocol dependencies will be packed and installed as regular
dependencies instead of creating a symlink. This option has no effect on
workspaces.

See Also

• npm uninstall
• npm folders
• npm ls