BibTeX Cleaner

[] (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22902740)

A VSCode-compatible extension that analyzes LaTeX projects to find unused BibTeX references and lets you comment them out or delete them safely.

Install

Install BibTeX Cleaner from the Open VSX Registry. If you use VSCodium or another Open VSX-compatible editor, you can install the extension directly from its Extensions view.

Why BibTeX Cleaner?

Large LaTeX projects often accumulate bibliography entries that are no longer cited. Manually identifying them can be tedious, especially when citations are distributed across multiple .tex files.

BibTeX Cleaner analyzes the project structure and identifies bibliography entries that are not referenced by the document, allowing users to review and safely comment or remove them.

What it does

• Automatically detects the project's main .tex file (or uses the one you configure).
• Follows all \input{} / \include{} includes to find every TeX file in the project.
• Extracts cited references from the most common citation commands (\cite, \citep, \citet, \textcite, \footcite, etc.).
• Compares those citations against the entries in the .bib file to compute which ones are unused.
• Lets you select which references you want to act on.
• Comments or deletes the selected references, creating a backup first.

Usage

1. Open the LaTeX project folder in VS Code.
2. Open a .bib file.
3. Click the BibTeX Cleaner icon (book icon) in the editor title bar, or run the BibTeX Cleaner command from the command palette.

Then:

1. The project is analyzed and the unused references are shown in a multi-select list (you can pick them one by one or use "Select all unused references").
2. Choose an action:
   • Comment selected — wraps the entries in @comment{...}.
   • Delete selected — removes the entries entirely.
   • Comment all unused / Delete all unused — applies the operation to all unused references.
3. Confirm the operation in the modal dialog.
4. Before modifying the file, a backup with the .bak extension is created next to the .bib.

How it analyzes the project

Main .tex file

The main file is determined in this order:

1. The path configured in bibtexCleaner.mainFile (if it exists).
2. main.tex or thesis.tex in the workspace root.
3. Any .tex in the root that contains \documentclass.

Included .tex files

All files imported with \input{...} or \include{...} are explored recursively (omitting the .tex extension is supported). LaTeX comments (%) are ignored during the analysis.

Recognized citation commands

\cite, \citep, \citet, \citealp, \citealt, \citeauthor, \citeyear, \parencite, \textcite, \autocite, \footcite, \smartcite and \supercite, plus \nocite{...}.

Note: if the document contains \nocite{*}, all references are considered used and the extension will not make any changes.

.bib file

The .bib file is chosen in this order:

1. The path configured in bibtexCleaner.bibFile (if it exists).
2. The currently open .bib file.
3. If there is a single .bib in the root, it is used automatically.
4. If there are several, you are asked to pick one.

The parser handles nested braces {}, parentheses (), quoted strings and escape sequences. The @comment, @string and @preamble directives are not treated as entries.

Configuration

Safety

• A .bak copy of the .bib file is created automatically before any modification.
• Operations require explicit confirmation in a modal dialog showing the affected references.
• When commenting, entries are preserved wrapped in @comment{...} and can be restored manually.

Limitations

BibTeX Cleaner does not compile the LaTeX project. Instead, it analyzes the source files and identifies bibliography entries referenced by recognized citation commands.

Complex or custom citation commands not included in the supported list may require manual verification.

License

MIT — see the LICENSE file.