How can I uninstall npm modules in Node.js?

Question

As commonly known, any npm module can be installed by running a simple command: npm install <module_name>.

I have installed a few modules that I do not use any more and I just want to get them off. I have a few questions regarding this:

• Do we have any command or process to uninstall a module from the root (something like npm uninstall <module_name>) or will simply removing the module files do?

• How does it affect us if we keep the unused modules?

Answer 1

The command is simply npm uninstall <name>

The Node.js documents https://npmjs.org/doc/ have all the commands that you need to know with npm.

A local install will be in the node_modules/ directory of your application. This won't affect the application if a module remains there with no references to it.

If you're removing a global package, however, any applications referencing it will crash.

Here are different options:

npm uninstall <name> removes the module from node_modules but does not update package.json

npm uninstall <name> --save also removes it from dependenciesin package.json

npm uninstall <name> --save-dev also removes it from devDependencies in package.json

npm uninstall -g <name> --save also removes it globally