Managing packages on Arch with pacman and AUR

On Arch (and derivatives like Manjaro), pacman is the default package manager. Together with yay for the AUR, it covers pretty much everything. Here are the commands I use most.

Listing packages

# all installed packages
pacman -Q

# only explicitly installed ones (not dependencies)
pacman -Qqe

# packages from outside the official repository (includes AUR)
pacman -Qqem

The -Q switches are worth memorizing:

Flag	Meaning
-Q	Queries the local package database
-e	Only explicitly installed packages
-t	Excludes dependencies of explicit packages
-n	Excludes external/AUR packages
-q	Quiet output (name only)

Clearing cache

pacman accumulates downloaded packages in /var/cache/pacman/pkg/. It’s worth cleaning it out occasionally:

sudo pacman -Sc --noconfirm
yay -Sc --noconfirm

-Sc removes old versions and keeps only the latest of each package. Use -Scc to clear everything, including the current version (more aggressive).

Removing orphan packages

Orphans are packages that were installed as dependencies but no longer have any “owner”:

sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qtdq)

• pacman -Qtdq lists the orphans
• pacman -Rns removes the package, its unused dependencies (-s), and configuration files (-n)

Install only what’s missing from a list

If you have a file with a list of packages and want to install without reinstalling what’s already up to date:

pacman -S --needed <package list>

--needed skips packages that are already at the latest version, avoiding unnecessary reinstalls.