How can I clear the central cache for `npx`?

Question

Let's say you're running this command:

npx gulp

npx will search for gulp within node_modules/.bin, and if it doesn't find it there, it will use a central cache. If it is missing, npx will install it.

How do I clear the central cache to force npx to reinstall gulp in this case?

@jonrsharpe unfortunately that didn't refresh the cache for `npx gulp`. After a couple of days I just had to clear the cache manually because it wasn't getting updated. — fregante, Feb 03 '21 at 01:08

score 40 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 16 '21 at 23:36

40

On macOS (and likely Linux) it's ~/.npm/_npx, you can drop it with:

rm -rf ~/.npm/_npx

On Windows it should be %LocalAppData%/npm-cache/_npx

Either way, you can find npm’s cache by running npm config get cache and then finding an npx folder in there.

edited Nov 16 '21 at 23:36

PitaJ

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answered Feb 03 '21 at 01:07

fregante

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Why is NPX keeping around outdated versions of packages that you need to explicitly purge? Doesn't seem right – ChrisM Mar 28 '22 at 17:50

James L · Answer 2 · 2021-12-22T13:02:44.350

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I needed to do this, due to an error in create-react-app saying 'We no longer support global installation of Create React App.' despite there being no global install. It was stuck in the npx cache, and I removed it like this

npx clear-npx-cache

edited Dec 22 '21 at 13:02

answered Dec 21 '21 at 09:06

James L

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How can I clear the central cache for `npx`?

2 Answers2

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