Find and clean junk directories across multiple languages ✨

Devkill lets you scan your system for directories that are safe to delete — node_modules, Python virtual environments, Rust build targets, Unity caches, and more. Choose a language profile, browse results, and reclaim disk space. Yay!

i18n

We're making an effort to internationalize the Devkill docs. Here's a list of the available translations:

• Español
• Indonesian
• Português
• Turkish

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installation
• Usage
  • Profiles
  • Search Mode
  • Multi-Select Mode
  • Options
  • Examples
  • JSON Output
• Set Up Locally
• API
• Roadmap
• Known bugs
• Contributing
• Buy us a coffee
• License

✔️ Features

• Multi-language cleanup: Profiles for Node.js, Python, Rust, Java, C++, Unity, Unreal, Godot, and more — each with curated lists of safe-to-delete directories.

• Interactive profile picker: On launch, choose which language ecosystems to scan. Mix and match profiles as needed.

• Last Workspace Usage: Check when was the last time you modified a file in the workspace (indicated in the last_mod column).

• Very fast: Devkill is written in TypeScript, but searches are performed at a low level, improving performance greatly.

• Easy to use: Say goodbye to lengthy commands. Using devkill is as simple as picking a profile, reading a list of directories, and pressing Del to get rid of them.

• Minified: It barely has any dependencies.

☁️ Installation

You don't really need to install it to use it! Simply use the following command:

$ npx devkill

Or if for some reason you really want to install it:

$ npm i -g devkill
# Unix users may need to run the command with sudo. Go carefully

Devkill requires node>=18.18.0.

📋 Usage

$ npx devkill
# or just devkill if installed globally

On startup, devkill shows a profile picker where you can choose which language ecosystems to scan (Node.js, Python, Rust, etc.). Press Space to toggle profiles, Enter to start scanning, or Esc to skip and use the default (node).

Move between the listed folders with ↓ ↑, and use Space or Del to delete the selected folder. You can also use j and k to move between the results.

You can open the directory where the selected result is placed by pressing o.

To exit, Q or Ctrl + c.

Important! Some applications installed on the system need their directories to work and deleting them may break them. Devkill will highlight them by displaying a ⚠️ to be careful.

Profiles

Profiles are named presets of directories to scan for a given language ecosystem. Devkill ships with built-in profiles:

Profile	Key targets
node (default)	node_modules, .next, .nuxt, .cache, coverage, ...
python	__pycache__, .venv, venv, .pytest_cache, ...
data-science	.ipynb_checkpoints, .mlruns, .dvc, ...
java	target, .gradle, out
rust	target
swift	DerivedData, .swiftpm
dotnet	obj, TestResults, .vs
ruby	.bundle
elixir	_build, deps, cover
haskell	dist-newstyle, .stack-work
scala	.bloop, .metals, target
cpp	CMakeFiles, cmake-build-debug, cmake-build-release
unity	Library, Temp, Obj
unreal	Intermediate, DerivedDataCache, Binaries
godot	.import, .godot
android	.cxx, externalNativeBuild
infra	.serverless, .terraform, .vercel, .netlify, ...
all	Every target from all profiles above

Use -p / --profiles to specify profiles directly without the picker:

devkill --profiles node,python,rust

See Profiles Documentation for the full target list per profile.

Search Mode

Search mode allows you to filter results. This can be particularly useful for limiting the view to a specific route or ensuring that only those results that meet the specified condition are "selected all."

For example, you can use this expression to limit the results to those that are in the work directory and that include data somewhere in the path: /work/.*/data.

Press / to enter search mode. You can type a regex pattern to filter results.

Press Enter to confirm the search and navigate the filtered results, or Esc to clear and exit.

To exit from this mode, leave empty.

Multi-Select Mode

This mode allows you to select and delete multiple folders at once, making it more efficient when cleaning up many directories.

Entering Multi-Select Mode

Press T to toggle multi-select mode. When active, you'll see a selection counter and additional instructions at the top of the results.

Controls

• Space: Toggle selection of the current folder.
• V: Start/end range selection mode.
• A: Toggle select/unselect all folders.
• Enter: Delete all selected folders.
• T: Unselect all and back to normal mode.

Range Selection

After pressing V to enter range selection mode:

• Move the cursor with arrow keys, j/k, Home/End, or page up/down
• All folders between the starting position and current cursor position will be selected/deselected
• Press V again to exit range selection mode

Options

ARGUMENT	DESCRIPTION
-p, --profiles	Allows you to select the profile (set of targets) to use. If no option is specified, the available ones will be listed (node by default).
--config	Path to a custom .devkillrc configuration file. By default, devkill looks first for ./.devkillrc and then for ~/.devkillrc.
-d, --directory	Set the directory from which to begin searching. By default, starting-point is .
-D, --delete-all	Automatically delete all folders that are found. Suggested to be used together with -x.
-e, --hide-errors	Hide errors if any
-E, --exclude	Exclude directories from search (directory list must be inside double quotes "", each directory separated by ',' ) Example: "ignore1, ignore2"
-f, --full	Start searching from the home of the user (example: "/home/user" in linux)
--size-unit	Set the unit for displaying folder sizes. (Available: auto, mb, gb). With auto, sizes < 1024MB are shown in MB (rounded), larger sizes in GB (with decimals).
-h, --help, ?	Show help page
-nu, --no-check-update	Don't check for updates on startup
-s, --sort	Sort results by: size, path or age
-t, --targets	Disable profiles feature and specify the name of the directories you want to search for. You can define multiple targets separating with comma. Ej. -t node_modules,.cache.
-x, --exclude-sensitive	Exclude sensitive directories.
-y	Avoid displaying a warning when executing --delete-all.
--dry-run	It does not delete anything (will simulate it with a random delay).
--json	Output results in JSON format at the end of the scan. Useful for automation and scripting.
--json-stream	Output results in streaming JSON format (one JSON object per line as results are found). Useful for real-time processing.
-v, --version	Show devkill version

Examples

• Search node_modules directories in your projects directory:

devkill -d ~/projects

# other alternative:
cd ~/projects
devkill

• Scan for both Node.js and Python junk in your projects:

devkill -d ~/projects --profiles node,python

• List node_modules in your projects directory, excluding the ones in progress and ignore-this directories:

devkill -d 'projects' --exclude "progress, ignore-this"

• Automatically delete all node_modules that have sneaked into your backups:

devkill -d ~/backups/ --delete-all

• Get results in JSON format for automation or further processing:

devkill --json > results.json

• Stream results in real-time as JSON (useful for monitoring or piping to other tools):

devkill --json-stream | jq '.'

• Save only successful results to a file, ignoring errors:

devkill --json-stream 2>/dev/null | jq -s '.' > clean-results.json

JSON Output

Devkill supports JSON output formats for automation and integration with other tools:

• --json: Output all results as a single JSON object at the end of the scan
• --json-stream: Output each result as a separate JSON object in real-time

For detailed documentation, examples, and TypeScript interfaces, see JSON Output Documentation.

Quick Examples:

# Get all results as JSON
devkill --json > results.json

# Process results in real-time
devkill --json-stream | jq '.result.path'

# Find directories larger than 100MB
devkill --json | jq '.results[] | select(.size > 104857600)'

📟 Set Up Locally

# -- First, clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/zaldih/npkill.git

# -- Navigate to the dir
cd npkill

# -- Install dependencies
npm install

# -- And run!
npm run start


# -- If you want to run it with some parameter, you will have to add "--" as in the following example:
npm run start -- -f -e

📑 API

The API allows you to interact with devkill from Node.js to create your own implementations in your scripts (automations, for example).

You can check the basic API here.

🔮 Roadmap

• Release 0.1.0 !
• Improve code
  • Improve performance
  • Improve performance even more!
• Sort results by size and path
• Allow the search for other types of directories (targets)
• Multi-language profiles (node, python, rust, java, etc.)
• Interactive profile picker on startup
• Reduce dependencies to be a more minimalist module
• Allow to filter by directories that have not been used in a period of time
• Create option for displaying directories in tree format
• Add some menus
• Add log service
• Periodic and automatic cleaning (?)

🐛 Known bugs 🐛

• Sometimes, CLI is blocked while folder is deleting.
• Sorting, especially by routes, can slow down the terminal when there are many results at the same time.
• Sometimes, size calculations are higher than they should be.
• (SOLVED) Performance issues when searching from high level directories (like / in linux).
• (SOLVED) Sometimes text collapses when updating the cli.
• (SOLVED) Analyzing the size of the directories takes longer than it should.

If you find any bugs, don't hesitate and open an issue :)

💞 Contributing

If you want to contribute check the CONTRIBUTING.md

☕ Buy us a coffee

We have developed devkill in our free time, because we are passionate about the programming sector. Tomorrow we would like to dedicate ourselves to this, but first, we have a long way to go.

We will continue to do things anyway, but donations are one of the many ways to support what we do.

Thanks!!

A huge thank you to our backers ❤️

---

Crypto alternative

• btc: 1ML2DihUoFTqhoQnrWy4WLxKbVYkUXpMAX
• bch: 1HVpaicQL5jWKkbChgPf6cvkH8nyktVnVk
• eth: 0x7668e86c8bdb52034606db5aa0d2d4d73a0d4259

📜 License

MIT © Nya García Gallardo and Juan Torres Gómez

🐱🐤

---