We investigate the viability of dynamical pruning of localized basis sets in time-dependent quantum wave packet methods. Basis functions that have a very small population at any given time are removed from the active set. The basis functions themselves are time independent, but the set of active functions changes in time. Two different types of localized basis functions are tested: discrete variable representation ͑DVR͒ functions, which are localized in position space, and phase-space localized ͑PSL͒ functions, which are localized in both position and momentum. The number of functions active at each point in time can be as much as an order of magnitude less for dynamical pruning than for static pruning, in reactive scattering calculations of H 2 on the Pt͑211͒ stepped surface. Scaling of the dynamically pruned PSL ͑DP-PSL͒ bases with dimension is considerably more favorable than for either the primitive ͑direct product͒ or DVR bases, and the DP-PSL basis set is predicted to be three orders of magnitude smaller than the primitive basis set in the current state-of-the-art six-dimensional reactive scattering calculations.