Clear the pnpm store and the Yarn and Bun caches

Each of the three has its own command:

pnpm store prune
yarn cache clean
bun pm cache rm

They do different things. pnpm removes only what no project uses. Yarn and Bun empty the whole cache. Below: where each one lives on a Mac, how to see its size first, and what happens on the next install.

pnpm: prune the store, do not delete it

pnpm keeps one copy of every package version in a store and hard-links the files into each project's node_modules. Ask it where the store is:

pnpm store path

On a Mac the answer is under ~/Library/pnpm/store. Size it:

du -sh "$(pnpm store path)"

Then prune:

pnpm store prune

Two details save confusion:

• Order matters. A package stays "referenced" while any node_modules links to it. To get space back from old projects, delete their node_modules first, then prune.
• A deleted pnpm node_modules frees little by itself. The files are hard links, so the bytes stay in the store until the prune.

pnpm has no dry run for the prune. It prints how many files and packages it removed when it is done. There is also a small metadata cache in ~/Library/Caches/pnpm. It is refetched when needed.

Yarn 1: one cache folder

yarn cache dir

Yarn 1 answers with a folder under ~/Library/Caches/Yarn. Check the size, then clean:

du -sh "$(yarn cache dir)"
yarn cache clean

yarn cache clean empties the cache. Add a package name, as in yarn cache clean react, to remove one package only.

Yarn 2 and later: global and per project

Modern Yarn has two places:

Yarn 4 uses the global cache by default, so most projects have no .yarn/cache at all.

One warning. Some teams commit .yarn/cache to git so that a clone needs no install ("zero-installs"). In such a project the cache is source, not a cache. Check before you clean:

git ls-files .yarn/cache | head -3

If that prints file names, leave the folder alone.

Bun

bun pm cache

prints the cache folder, ~/.bun/install/cache by default. Size and clear:

du -sh "$(bun pm cache)"
bun pm cache rm

Which one first

If the disk is full and you want the most space for the least waiting:

1. Delete node_modules in projects you have not opened for a month.
2. Run pnpm store prune. Nothing you use is removed.
3. Clear the cache of a package manager you no longer use at all. If every project moved from Yarn to pnpm, the Yarn cache is dead weight.
4. Clear the caches you do use last. They make the next installs slower.

The npm cache follows the same logic and has its own guide: how to clear the npm cache.

Two places people miss

A second pnpm store on another disk. Hard links cannot cross disks. When a project lives on an external or second disk, pnpm creates a separate store at the root of that disk, in a folder named .pnpm-store. pnpm store path, run inside such a project, shows it. Prune it from there.

Corepack's copies of the package managers themselves. If you use Corepack, every version of Yarn and pnpm that a packageManager field ever asked for is kept in ~/.cache/node/corepack:

du -sh ~/.cache/node/corepack/*/* 2>/dev/null

Each one is a few megabytes, and they add up over years of version bumps. corepack cache clean removes them. Corepack downloads a version again the next time a project asks for it.

If you are not sure which package manager a project uses, look at its lockfile: pnpm-lock.yaml means pnpm, yarn.lock means Yarn, bun.lock or bun.lockb means Bun, and package-lock.json means npm.