npm: using 'npm uninstall' vs. just removing the folder

Question

I wanted to try grunt-babel, so I opened up a terminal in my Home folder and did npm install --save-dev grunt-babel babel-preset-es2015 according to the plugin's instructions.

I was doing this too hastily, and realized I should probably have done this in my new project folder where I am dabbling with ES6 code. I had not even done npm init in that folder nor in the Home folder from where I executed the install command.

When I do npm uninstall grunt-babel, the preset files are removed but 91 folders of different dependencies remain in the node_modules folder.

Can I simply remove the folder instead of running npm uninstall 91 times?

This guy asked a similar question but none of the answers address his subquestion of just removing the folder: how to uninstall npm modules in node js?

Answer 1

• npm uninstall <name> removes the module from node_modules, but not package.json.

• npm uninstall <name> --save to also delete the dependency from package.json.

• npm rm <package_name> removes the packages when uninstall not working

• npm prune <name> (see docs) for extraneous packages and packages that are not listed on the parent package's dependencies list.

If you don't want to uninstall one by one run
rm -rf node_modules && npm cache clean && npm install
It's a good way for being sure the packages you uninstall are no more in the packages json.

Now in 2021 npm uninstall <name> will also removed it from package.json

Answer 2

UPDATED answer (2020):

These are all aliases to uninstall: remove, rm, r, un, unlink

And today there is no need for --save flag since it is the default. The same goes for install BTW.