Can I Delete the .turbo Folder? Yes, It's Safe
**/.turboYes, you can delete the .turbo folder. It's Turborepo's local task cache for one monorepo, and removing it loses nothing permanent: the next time you run turbo, tasks execute again and the cache rebuilds on its own. The only cost is that the next build takes full time instead of replaying cached results. This applies to the .turbo at your repo root and the smaller ones inside individual packages.
What it is
Turborepo is a build system for JavaScript and TypeScript monorepos. Its core trick is caching: when you run a task like build, lint, or test, turbo saves the task's output files and terminal logs. The next time you run the same task with the same inputs, turbo restores the result from cache in a fraction of a second instead of doing the work again. The .turbo folder is where that local cache and its bookkeeping live.
You'll usually find more than one. There's a .turbo at the root of the monorepo, and turbo also drops a small .turbo folder with run logs inside each package it has executed tasks in. Since Turborepo 2.0 the cached artifacts themselves sit in .turbo/cache at the repo root; on the older 1.x versions they live in node_modules/.cache/turbo instead. Size tracks your build output: a few megabytes on small repos, and it can climb to hundreds of megabytes or more on large monorepos with many packages and frequent builds, since every changed input writes a new cache entry and old entries stick around.
Is it safe to delete?
It's safe. Everything inside .turbo is derived data: cached task outputs and logs that turbo built from your source code. Delete it and your code, configuration, and git history are untouched. The next turbo run simply gets cache misses, so every task actually executes once, then re-caches. On a big monorepo that first rebuild can take a while, but nothing needs to be re-downloaded.
If your team uses remote caching (through Vercel, for example), deleting the local copy matters even less: turbo can restore previously cached results from the remote cache instead of rebuilding everything from scratch. Diskmack identifies .turbo folders across your projects automatically and cleans them the safe way.
How to check its size
In Finder: In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder (or press Command-Shift-G), type the path to your repo's .turbo folder, for example ~/Projects/my-monorepo/.turbo, and press Return. Select the folder and press Command-I to see its size. If .turbo isn't visible when browsing normally, press Command-Shift-Period to show hidden files.
In Terminal:
du -sh ~/Projects/my-monorepo/.turboReplace ~/Projects/my-monorepo with your repo's actual path, and wrap the path in double quotes if it contains spaces; the ~ expands to your home folder. To total every .turbo folder under a directory of projects, run: find ~/Projects -type d -name .turbo -exec du -sh {} +.
How to clean it
- Quit any running dev servers or turbo watch processes for the repo.
- Open the monorepo folder in Finder. If hidden files aren't showing, press Command-Shift-Period.
- Drag the .turbo folder at the repo root to the Trash.
- Check inside your apps and packages subfolders for smaller .turbo folders and trash those too.
- Empty the Trash to actually reclaim the space.
There's no official turbo command that clears the local cache, so removing the folder is the standard approach. If your repo is still on Turborepo 1.x, the cached artifacts live in node_modules/.cache/turbo instead, and that copy goes away any time you delete node_modules.
Will it come back?
Yes, and quickly, because that's the whole point of the folder. The first turbo run after deleting re-executes every task and writes fresh cache entries, so within one build the folder exists again. How big it gets from there depends on your build output and how often inputs change: each change produces a new cache entry, and stale ones linger until something removes them. Treat deleting .turbo as a periodic cleanup for repos you still work on, and as a permanent win only for monorepos you've abandoned.
Common questions
Will deleting .turbo break my monorepo?
No. The folder holds cached task results and logs, not source code or configuration. The worst case is one slow build while turbo re-runs every task and rebuilds the cache.
Why are there .turbo folders inside my packages too?
Turbo writes a small .turbo folder with task logs into each workspace it has run tasks in. They're the same kind of derived data as the root folder and just as safe to remove. They come back the next time tasks run in that package.
Does deleting .turbo affect Vercel remote caching?
No. Remote cache entries live on the server, not in your local .turbo folder. If remote caching is enabled, your next run can even restore results from the remote cache instead of rebuilding everything locally.
Should I add .turbo to .gitignore?
Yes. It's machine-generated and machine-specific, so it doesn't belong in version control. Recent create-turbo templates ignore it by default; older repos sometimes miss it.