How can I clear the NuGet package cache using the command line?

Question

I can clear my development computer's NuGet package cache using Visual Studio menu Tools → Options → NuGet Package Manager → General: Clear Package Cache button.

I would like to do this on the command line. Unfortunately, I can not find a related command line switch for nuget.exe.

Did I miss something?

Answer 1

First, download the NuGet command line tool from here.

Next, open a command prompt and cd to the directory to which nuget.exe was downloaded.

You can list the local caches with this command:

nuget locals all -list

You can clear all caches with this command:

nuget locals all -clear

Reference: https://docs.nuget.org/consume/command-line-reference

Answer 2

The nuget.exe utility doesn't have this feature, but seeing that the NuGet cache is simply a folder on your computer, you can delete the files manually. Just add this to your batch file:

del %LOCALAPPDATA%\NuGet\Cache\*.nupkg /q

Answer 3

This adds to rm8x's answer.

Download and install the NuGet command line tool.

• From Chocolatey → https://chocolatey.org/packages/NuGet.CommandLine
• from NuGet.org → https://www.nuget.org/

List all of our locals:

$ nuget locals all -list
http-cache: C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Local\NuGet\v3-cache
packages-cache: C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Local\NuGet\Cache
global-packages: C:\Users\MyUser\.nuget\packages\

We can now delete these manually or as rm8x suggests, use nuget locals all -clear.

Answer 4

Note that dnx has a different cache for feeding HTTP results:

Microsoft .NET Development Utility Clr-x86-1.0.0-rc1-16231
   CACHE https://www.nuget.org/api/v2/
   CACHE http://192.168.148.21/api/odata/

Which you can clear with

dnu clear-http-cache

Now we just need to find out what the command will be on the new dotnet CLI tool.

...and here it is:

dotnet restore --no-cache

Answer 5

dotnet nuget locals all --clear

If you're using .NET Core.

Answer 6

For me I had to go in here:

%userprofile%\.nuget\packages

Answer 7

In Visual Studio 2022, go to menu Tools → NuGet Package Manager → Package Manager Settings. You may find out a button, Clear All NuGet Storage:

The steps are similar in previous versions of Visual Studio too.

If you are using .NET Core, you may clear the cache with this command, which should work as of .NET Core tools 1.0:

dotnet nuget locals all --clear

Answer 8

If you need to clear the NuGet cache for your build server/agent you can find the cache for NuGet packages here:

%windir%/ServiceProfiles/[account under build service runs]\AppData\Local\NuGet\Cache

Example:

C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Local\NuGet\Cache

Answer 9

I've saw my nugets in this folder (on build server): c:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile.nuget\packages\

Answer 10

I ended up here because I was trying to figure out how to delete a specific nuget package from the cache. The answers above talk about deleting all local packages using nuget locals all -clear.

In case anyone is interested in clearing a specific package, I'm sharing my findings:

• You can't currently clear a specific package using the nuget or dotnet cli. There is a github issue open to fix this: https://github.com/NuGet/Home/issues/5713
• For now, you have to resort to filesystem commands (as some of the answers above mention) to delete the specific package. For mac/linux, it was rm -rf ~/.nuget/packages/<package-name>
• What I actually needed was a way to delete the cache of a specific package that I was about to re-publish to a local nuget repository (using a fixed version number to make local development easier). I accomplished this by adding the following to the .csproj file of the nuget-packaged library:

    <Project>
      <Target Name="DeleteLocalCache" BeforeTargets="Pack">
        <RemoveDir Directories="$(NugetPackageRoot)/$(PackageId.ToLower())/1.0.0-local"/>
      </Target>
    </Project>

Answer 11

For those who installed nuget on RHEL7 (e.g., from the EPEL repository) using sudo yum install nuget, here is where local cache is located:

~/.local/share/NuGet/Cache

Answer 12

You can use PowerShell too (same as me).

For example:

rm $env:LOCALAPPDATA\NuGet\Cache\*.nupkg

Or 'quiet' mode (without error messages):

rm $env:LOCALAPPDATA\NuGet\Cache\*.nupkg 2> $null