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Mayne
Mayne

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I reclaimed 12GB from my SSD with one terminal command (and you can too)

#node #cli #opensource #productivity

I've been a developer for over a decade, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that our hard drives are basically landfills for build artifacts.

A few weeks ago, I was down to 2GB free on my main SSD. Not because I had tons of important files — but because I had years worth of node_modules folders, .next build caches, dist directories, and other junk scattered across dozens of old projects.

I tried reclaiming space manually. You know the drill — du -sh to find the culprits, then rm -rf them one by one. It works, but it's tedious. I tried npkill — it only handles node_modules. I tried wipe-modules — same limitation. I wanted something that could find everything at once and let me pick what to delete in one go.

So I built ZapDir.

What is ZapDir?

ZapDir is a terminal cleanup tool that scans your projects for heavy build artifacts and lets you delete them through a beautiful interactive interface. It's completely free, open-source under MIT, and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux with Node.js 18+.

npm install -g zapdir
zapdir
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Run that, and you'll see something like this:

⚡  ZapDir  —  Terminal Cleanup Tool

  🗑  Junk Found — Total recoverable:  1.47 GB

  ██████████  node_modules    /node_modules      245.23 MB
  ██████░░░░  .next           /.next               1.23 GB
  ██░░░░░░░░  dist            /dist                89.45 MB

  ✔  Delete 3 item(s) freeing 1.47 GB?  ·  Yes

  ✔  Freed 1.47 GB of disk space!
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The colored size bars make it obvious what's eating the most space at a glance — red for anything over 500MB, yellow for over 100MB, and green for the rest.

What makes it different from npkill or wipe-modules?

There are other cleanup tools out there, but most of them only handle one pattern. Here's how ZapDir compares:

Feature ZapDir npkill wipe-modules
Patterns detected 13+ 1 (node_modules) 1 (node_modules)
Interactive TUI ✅ ✅ ❌
Color-coded sizes ✅ ❌ ❌
Dry-run preview ✅ ❌ ❌
Async scanner ✅ ❌ ❌
Cross-platform ✅ ✅ ✅

ZapDir detects: node_modules, .next, .nuxt, .turbo, dist, build, .cache, coverage, out, target, .parcel-cache, __pycache__, and .DS_Store.

What it found on my machine

I ran ZapDir across my development machine and here's what turned up:

Location What was there Space recovered
~/Projects/legacy-app node_modules + .next 1.8 GB
~/Projects/side-project node_modules + build 640 MB
~/Projects/old-tutorial node_modules 420 MB
~/.cache Various caches 340 MB
Various Rust projects target/ directories 2.1 GB
Old Next.js projects .next caches 3.4 GB
Abandoned monorepos node_modules × 5 2.2 GB
Python projects __pycache__ + .cache 180 MB

Total reclaimed: roughly 12 GB

That's 12 GB I got back without touching a single file I actually needed. The biggest wins were old Next.js projects with massive .next caches (some over 1 GB each) and Rust projects where target/ directories had accumulated to over 2 GB combined.

Is it safe?

Short answer: yes, if you use --dry-run first.

zapdir --dry-run ~/Projects
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This scans and shows you exactly what would be deleted without actually removing anything. The output shows every item with its size, path, and a visual bar so you know exactly what you're getting into.

When you're satisfied with the preview, run it without the flag. You'll be prompted to confirm before anything is deleted:

✔  Delete 3 item(s) freeing 1.47 GB?  ·  Yes / No
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The scanner uses fs.promises.readdir with async parallel traversal for speed, and deletion is done with Promise.allSettled so a permission error on one file won't crash the entire operation — it just skips that file and continues. I've been using it for weeks and haven't lost a single file I needed.

How the scanning works

The core logic is surprisingly straightforward. It walks directories recursively using Node.js's built-in fs.promises, matches directory names against a list of known artifact patterns, calculates sizes using a streaming iterator (to avoid memory issues on huge folders), and presents everything in an interactive selection menu powered by @clack/prompts.

Hidden directories like .git are skipped by default for speed. The entire scan of my home directory — thousands of folders — completes in under 10 seconds.

A practical tip

Here's what I do now: once a month, I run:

zapdir --dry-run ~/Projects
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This gives me a quick health check of how much junk has accumulated. When the number crosses 1 GB, I run it for real and reclaim the space. It's become part of my regular maintenance routine, right alongside brew update and npm outdated.

Give it a shot

If you're running low on disk space and have old projects lying around, try it:

npm install -g zapdir
zapdir
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It takes five seconds to install and could free up gigabytes. The code is open source under MIT, so you can inspect exactly what it does before running it.

⭐ Star the repo on GitHub if you find it useful — it helps other developers discover it too.

ZapDir is MIT licensed and open source. Contributions, feature requests, and bug reports are welcome on GitHub.

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