The npx cache on a Mac: why ~/.npm/_npx grows to gigabytes

How big it gets

I measured mine on 1 November 2026:

$ du -sh ~/.npm/_cacache ~/.npm/_npx
#  11M  ~/.npm/_cacache
# 3.9G  ~/.npm/_npx

npm's own download cache was 11 MB. The npx folder next to it was 3.9 GB, 59 folders, from a few months of npx something in tutorials and READMEs. The biggest ones:

Deploy CLIs are the heavy ones. They pull in hundreds of dependencies, and npx keeps all of them.

Why the same tool is there three times

npx names each folder after a hash of the exact package text you typed. In npm's source (libnpmexec), it's the first 16 characters of a SHA-512 of the package names, sorted and joined. You can check it yourself:

$ printf '%s' vercel | shasum -a 512 | cut -c1-16
# 69f9afb961c37556
$ printf '%s' vercel@latest | shasum -a 512 | cut -c1-16
# 67eb4586ca667318

Both folders were in my _npx. npx vercel and npx vercel@latest run the same tool, but npx sees different text, so each gets its own full install. A third spelling, from a README that pinned a version, made the third copy. The same goes for react-doctor and react-doctor@latest, which left me two identical 165 MB installs.

Nothing removes the old ones. My npx vercel folder still held vercel 59.1, last touched on 1 June.

npm cache clean doesn't reach it

npm cache clean --force is the usual advice, and it only removes _cacache. In npm's source the command deletes join(npm.cache, '_cacache') and nothing else. On my Mac it would have freed 11 MB and left the 3.9 GB.

Clear it

On npm 11 and later, npm manages the folder itself. These were on npm 11.12.1:

$ npm cache npx ls                    # every entry, with its packages
$ npm cache npx info 69f9afb961c37556 # one entry in detail
$ npm cache npx rm 69f9afb961c37556   # remove one
$ npm cache npx rm                    # remove them all

ls printed (unknown) for 24 of my 59 entries, ones that don't record what was asked for. npm cache npx info <key> still shows the packages inside.

On npm 10, npm cache npx fails with EUSAGE (my npm 10.9.8 did). Delete the folder instead:

$ npm --version
$ rm -rf ~/.npm/_npx

Keep it small

• Install the tools you use every day. npm install -g vercel keeps one copy, which npm update -g keeps current. npx is for tools you run once.
• Type the name the same way every time. Pick npx vercel or npx vercel@latest, not both.
• Clear it every few months. It only fills up again with what you actually use.

Browsers that npx downloads

Some tools you run with npx download more than packages. npx playwright install puts browsers in ~/Library/Caches/ms-playwright, outside _npx, and clearing npx leaves them. Mine held Chromium, Firefox and WebKit, 1.1 GB.

Shedi clears npm's download cache and the browsers Playwright and Puppeteer downloadedIt shows each one with its size and what brings it back, and moves what you pick to the Trash. It doesn't list the _npx folder yet, so use the commands above for that.

Get Shedi

To see every developer cache on your Mac side by side, _npx included, run diskreceipt, a free Terminal tool that only reads. For the rest of the JavaScript caches, see Delete node_modules safely.

Sources

• npm docs: npm cache
• npm docs: npm exec and npx
• npm's source on this Mac: lib/commands/cache.js (clean deletes _cacache only) and libnpmexec/lib/index.js (the folder hash).
• Measured on this Mac on 1 November 2026 (npm 10.9.8 and 11.12.1): du, npm cache npx ls, npm cache npx info and the hash check above. Nothing was deleted.