Stop tracking files ignored by .gitignore

Changing .gitignore does not affect files Git already tracks.

Ignore rules prevent matching untracked files from being added. Files already present in Git’s index remain tracked until they are removed from it explicitly.

The relevant command is:

git rm --cached

The --cached flag removes files from the index while keeping the local copies on disk.

Example

Assume .gitignore contains:

generated/

Git will ignore new files inside generated/. However, files that were added before this rule was introduced remain tracked, for example:

generated/example-file.ext
generated/cache.json
generated/debug.log
generated/output/data.json

Their changes can therefore continue to appear in git status.

List tracked files that are now ignored

Use the following command to list files that are present in the index but match the current ignore rules:

git ls-files --cached --ignored --exclude-standard

Limit the result to generated/:

git ls-files --cached --ignored --exclude-standard -- generated/

Dry-run the cleanup

Before changing the index, inspect what Git would remove:

git ls-files --cached --ignored --exclude-standard -z -- generated/ \
  | xargs -0 -r git rm --cached --dry-run --ignore-unmatch

The null-delimited output safely handles filenames containing spaces or other unusual characters.

Stop tracking the files

When the dry-run output is correct:

git ls-files --cached --ignored --exclude-standard -z -- generated/ \
  | xargs -0 -r git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch

This stages the files for removal from the repository without deleting them from the working tree.

For a single file:

git rm --cached -- generated/example-file.ext

Do not omit --cached unless the file should also be deleted locally:

git rm -- generated/example-file.ext

Review the staged changes with git status --short, then commit the updated .gitignore and the removals from the index:

git add -- .gitignore
git commit --message "chore: stop tracking ignored generated files"

List ignored untracked files

After the cleanup, the files are ordinary ignored files in the working tree.

Show ignored files alongside the normal status output:

git status --ignored --short

List only ignored untracked files:

git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard

Limit the result to generated/:

git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard -- generated/

Optionally delete ignored files locally

Use git clean only when the ignored files should also be removed from disk.

Always start with a dry-run:

git clean --dry-run -d -X -- generated/

Run the deletion only after reviewing the output:

git clean --force -d -X -- generated/

Uppercase -X removes only ignored files. Lowercase -x also removes non-ignored untracked files and is considerably more destructive.

For generated files, caches, logs, and other local files that should remain available, git rm --cached is the appropriate operation.