You can do it manually with the next command:

find . | grep -E "(/__pycache__$|\.pyc$|\.pyo$)" | xargs rm -rf

This will remove all .pyc and .pyo files as well as __pycache__ directories recursively starting from the current directory.

macOS & Linux

BSD's find implementation on macOS is different from GNU find - this is compatible with both BSD and GNU find. Start with a globbing implementation, using -name and the -o for or - Put this function in your .bashrc file:

pyclean () {
    find . -type f -name '*.py[co]' -delete -o -type d -name __pycache__ -delete
}

Then cd to the directory you want to recursively clean, and type pyclean.

GNU find-only

This is a GNU find, only (i.e. Linux) solution, but I feel it's a little nicer with the regex:

pyclean () {
    find . -regex '^.*\(__pycache__\|\.py[co]\)$' -delete
}

Any platform, using Python 3

On Windows, you probably don't even have find. You do, however, probably have Python 3, which starting in 3.4 has the convenient pathlib module:

python3 -Bc "import pathlib; [p.unlink() for p in pathlib.Path('.').rglob('*.py[co]')]"
python3 -Bc "import pathlib; [p.rmdir() for p in pathlib.Path('.').rglob('__pycache__')]"

The -B flag tells Python not to write .pyc files. (See also the PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE environment variable.)

The above abuses list comprehensions for looping, but when using python -c, style is rather a secondary concern. Alternatively we could abuse (for example) __import__:

python3 -Bc "for p in __import__('pathlib').Path('.').rglob('*.py[co]'): p.unlink()"
python3 -Bc "for p in __import__('pathlib').Path('.').rglob('__pycache__'): p.rmdir()"

Critique of an answer

The top answer used to say:

find . | grep -E "(__pycache__|\.pyc|\.pyo$)" | xargs rm -rf

This would seem to be less efficient because it uses three processes. find takes a regular expression, so we don't need a separate invocation of grep. Similarly, it has -delete, so we don't need a separate invocation of rm —and contrary to a comment here, it will delete non-empty directories so long as they get emptied by virtue of the regular expression match.

From the xargs man page:

find /tmp -depth -name core -type f -delete

Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them, but more efficiently than in the previous example (because we avoid the need to use fork(2) and exec(2) to launch rm and we don't need the extra xargs process).

Since this is a Python 3 project, you only need to delete __pycache__ directories -- all .pyc/.pyo files are inside them.

find . -type d -name __pycache__ -exec rm -r {} \+

_{(Note: using -delete instead of -exec rm -r {} \+ won't work because it can't delete non-empty directories)}

Alternatively, if you're doing this in a directory that's under revision control, you can tell the RCS to ignore __pycache__ directories recursively. Then, at the required moment, just clean up all the ignored files. This will likely be more convenient because there'll probably be more to clean up than just __pycache__.

If you need a permanent solution for keeping Python cache files out of your project directories:

Starting with Python 3.8, you can use the environment variable PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX to define a cache directory for Python.

From the Python docs:

If this is set, Python will write .pyc files in a mirror directory tree at this path, instead of in __pycache__ directories within the source tree. This is equivalent to specifying the -X pycache_prefix=PATH option.

Example

If you add the following line to your ~/.profile shell configuration file on Linux:

export PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX="${HOME}/.cache/Python"

Python won't create the annoying __pycache__ directories in your project directory; instead, it will put all of them under ~/.cache/Python

If you work Linux and macOS, you could add these lines to ~/.bash_profile / ~/.profile for a cross-platform shell configuration (which also creates the folder as required):

# set python cache folder for .pyc files:
#   https://stackoverflow.com/a/57415054
case "${OSTYPE}" in
    darwin*)
        folder="${HOME}/Library/Caches/Python"
        if [[ ! -d "${folder}" ]]; then mkdir -p "${folder}"; fi
        export PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX="${folder}"
        ;;
    linux-*)
        folder="${HOME}/.cache/Python"
        if [[ ! -d "${folder}" ]]; then mkdir -p "${folder}"; fi
        export PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX="${folder}"
        ;;
    *)
        printf "WARNING: unsupported operating system '%s'; "`
              `'not setting PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX' "${OSTYPE}" >&2
        return 1
        ;;
esac

I'm running Python3 and pip3 on a Mac. For me, the solution was as follows (In the root directory of my project):

pip3 install pyclean
pyclean .

I'd like to emphasize, since I see many answers which involve bash scripting, it is best practice in software to favour tested solutions to problems (which is exactly what an established python package represents) over a hand-rolled approach.

The command I've used:

find . -type d -name "__pycache__" -exec rm -r {} +

Explanation:

1. First finds all __pycache__ folders in current directory.

2. Execute rm -r {} + to delete each folder at step above ({} signify for placeholder and + to end the command).

I'm using Linux, to reuse the command I've added the line below to the ~/.bashrc file:

alias rm-pycache='find . -type d -name  "__pycache__" -exec rm -r {} +'

If you're using VS Code, you don't need to remove __pycache__ manually. You can add the snippet below to settings.json file. After that, VS Code will hide all __pycache__ folders for you.

"files.exclude": {
     "**/__pycache__": true
}

There is a nice pip package:

pip install pyclean

Now you can use:

pyclean --verbose .

This is my alias that works both with Python 2 and Python 3 removing all .pyc .pyo files as well __pycache__ directories recursively.

alias pyclean='find . -name "*.py[co]" -o -name __pycache__ -exec rm -rf {} +'

Using PyCharm

To remove Python compiled files

1. In the Project Tool Window, right-click a project or directory, where Python compiled files should be deleted from.

2. On the context menu, choose Clean Python compiled files.

The .pyc files residing in the selected directory are silently deleted.

From the project directory type the following:

Deleting all .pyc files

find . -path "*/*.pyc" -delete

Deleting all .pyo files:

find . -path "*/*.pyo" -delete

Finally, to delete all '__pycache__', type:

find . -path "*/__pycache__" -type d -exec rm -r {} ';'

If you encounter permission denied error, add sudo at the begining of all the above command.

Most of the time your project is under source control; in case Git is used, one can just run git clean -d -f . to clean up non-version controlled files; in case Python cache files/directories are in .gitignore, you'll also need -x (also remove ignored files) or -X (remove only ignored files) command line switches.

Please note that if you have any temporary files that have to be saved, move them outside local repository or add to index tree before running git clean without -X.

This is what I used for my Debian package's prerm file:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

deb_package='package-name'
python_package='package_name'

if which pyclean >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    py3clean -p $deb_package
else
    dpkg -L $deb_package | grep ${python_package}$ | while read file
    do
        find ${file} -type d -name __pycache__ -exec rm -r {} \+
    done
fi

Empty the directories first and then remove them:

find ./ -type f -name '*.pyc' -delete -print && find ./ -type d -name '__pycache__' -delete -print

Why not just use rm -rf __pycache__? Run git add -A afterwards to remove them from your repository and add __pycache__/ to your .gitignore file.

As simple as it can be

#!/bin/bash

project_root_dir=$(pwd)

# 
# function _dcache deletes __pycache__ folders floating around python modules
# 
function _dcache() {
  find "$project_root_dir/inb" -name "__pycache__" > pycache

  while IFS= read -r cache_file; do
    rm -r $cache_file
  done < pycache

  rm pycache
}

This is what I use for my projects. You can give it a try.

If you have a nested directory with multiple junk files, you can give the root directory to the following function and it will clear all subfolders from the junkies:

import os, shutil
def clean_all_from_junk(directory):
    def delete_junk(f):
        try:
            shutil.rmtree(f)
        except:
            os.unlink(f)
    msk_dirs = os.listdir(directory)  
    for f in msk_dirs:
        if f.startswith('.') or f=='__pycache__' or f.endswith('txt'):
            junk_p = os.path.join(directory, f)
            print('deleted-->', junk_p)
            delete_junk(junk_p)
        else:
            if os.path.isdir(f):
                subfolder_p = os.path.join(directory, f)
                clean_all_from_junk(subfolder_p)
    return 'All cleaned!'

 
clean_all_from_junk('path/to/root/directory')

If you deleted all the __pycache__/ stuff and you still get HINT: remove __pycache__/.pyc files and/or use a unique basename for your test file modules, it may be caused by the second part of the error message - just check that you don't have the two files with the exact names.

Using rm-pycache:

python3 -m pip install rm-pycache

from rm_pycache import rm_pycache

rm_pycache()

You can specify the path, or otherwise it will run in the current working directory.

The platform-independent version, using PowerShell, is:

Get-ChildItem -Directory -Recurse -Include __pycache__ | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse

It will delete all __pycache__ folders, including the content. You can omit the piping to check what would get deleted first. Out of PowerShell, you can run it as follows:

pwsh -Command "Get-ChildItem -Directory -Recurse -Include __pycache__ | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse"

uvx pyclean . --debris

This works great for me. No issues and is the simplest without any mess.