Removing Tracked Files in .gitignore

Local setup on windows

I updated my .gitignore file but files that should now be ignored are still being tracked in your remote repository. This is a common issue because .gitignore only prevents untracked files from being added - it doesn’t remove files that are already being tracked by Git.

Reply by Claude

Here’s how to fix this:

1. Remove the files from Git’s tracking (but keep them locally):

   git rm --cached <file-or-directory>

   For directories, use:

   git rm -r --cached <directory>

   Or to remove all files that are now in .gitignore:

   git rm -r --cached .
   git add .

2. Commit the changes:

   git commit -m "Remove ignored files from tracking"

3. Push to remote:

   git push

The --cached flag removes files from Git’s index (staging area) but leaves them in your working directory. After you push these changes, the files will be removed from the remote repository but will remain on your local machine.

If you want to remove files that were previously committed and are now in .gitignore, you’ll need to explicitly remove them from tracking as shown above. The .gitignore update alone won’t automatically clean up previously tracked files.