--- title: How to Leverage PurgeCSS in Your Rails App for Faster... description: Large Rails apps often ship bloated CSS from frameworks like Bootstrap or Tailwind. PurgeCSS, integrated as a PostCSS plugin via cssbundling-rails, scans ERB... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-leverage-purgecss-in-your-rails-app-for-faster-stylesheets---fastruby-io-i5zhqhutk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How to Leverage PurgeCSS in Your Rails App for Faster Stylesheets - FastRuby.io | daily.dev og:description: Large Rails apps often ship bloated CSS from frameworks like Bootstrap or Tailwind. PurgeCSS, integrated as a PostCSS plugin via cssbundling-rails, scans ERB... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-leverage-purgecss-in-your-rails-app-for-faster-stylesheets---fastruby-io-i5zhqhutk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/I5zHQhutK.png og:image:alt: How to Leverage PurgeCSS in Your Rails App for Faster Stylesheets - FastRuby.io og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How to Leverage PurgeCSS in Your Rails App for Faster Stylesheets - FastRuby.io **[RUBYLAND](https://daily.dev/sources/rubyla)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Large Rails apps often ship bloated CSS from frameworks like Bootstrap or Tailwind. PurgeCSS, integrated as a PostCSS plugin via cssbundling-rails, scans ERB templates, helpers, JavaScript, and component files to remove unused CSS selectors in production builds. The setup involves installing @fullhuman/postcss-purgecss via Yarn, configuring postcss.config.js to run only when NODE_ENV=production, defining content paths, using a permissive defaultExtractor, and maintaining a safelist for dynamically added classes. Key advice includes testing on staging before production and noting that Tailwind CSS users don't need PurgeCSS since Tailwind's JIT engine handles this natively. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Asset pipelines: just say no](https://daily.dev/posts/asset-pipelines-just-say-no-b4lyss4g9) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Simple Tailwind CSS 4 Setup for Jekyll](https://daily.dev/posts/simple-tailwind-css-4-setup-for-jekyll-llesuqwod) · RUBYLAND · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Migrating a Rails App From Sprockets to JS Bundling With Esbuild - FastRuby.io](https://daily.dev/posts/migrating-a-rails-app-from-sprockets-to-js-bundling-with-esbuild---fastruby-io-rpjdmjyyn) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#css](https://daily.dev/tags/css), [#rails](https://daily.dev/tags/rails) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-leverage-purgecss-in-your-rails-app-for-faster-stylesheets---fastruby-io-i5zhqhutk) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How to Leverage PurgeCSS in Your Rails App for Faster Stylesheets - FastRuby.io","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-leverage-purgecss-in-your-rails-app-for-faster-stylesheets---fastruby-io-i5zhqhutk","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-leverage-purgecss-in-your-rails-app-for-faster-stylesheets---fastruby-io-i5zhqhutk"},"datePublished":"2026-06-08T20:25:24.979Z","dateModified":"2026-06-08T20:44:58.823Z","description":"Large Rails apps often ship bloated CSS from frameworks like Bootstrap or Tailwind. 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