config

Description

This article details npm configuration in general. To learn about the config command, see npm config.

npm gets its configuration values from the following sources, sorted by priority:

Command Line Flags

Putting --foo bar on the command line sets the foo configuration parameter to "bar". A -- argument tells the cli parser to stop reading flags. Using --flag without specifying any value will set the value to true.

Example: --flag1 --flag2 will set both configuration parameters to true, while --flag1 --flag2 bar will set flag1 to true, and flag2 to bar. Finally, --flag1 --flag2 -- bar will set both configuration parameters to true, and the bar is taken as a command argument.

Environment Variables

Any environment variables that start with npm_config_ will be interpreted as a configuration parameter. For example, putting npm_config_foo=bar in your environment will set the foo configuration parameter to bar. Any environment configurations that are not given a value will be given the value of true. Config values are case-insensitive, so NPM_CONFIG_FOO=bar will work the same. However, please note that inside scripts npm will set its own environment variables and Node will prefer those lowercase versions over any uppercase ones that you might set. For details see this issue.

Notice that you need to use underscores instead of dashes, so --allow-same-version would become npm_config_allow_same_version=true.

npmrc Files

The four relevant files are:

• per-project configuration file (/path/to/my/project/.npmrc)
• per-user configuration file (defaults to $HOME/.npmrc; configurable via CLI option --userconfig or environment variable $NPM_CONFIG_USERCONFIG)
• global configuration file (defaults to $PREFIX/etc/npmrc; configurable via CLI option --globalconfig or environment variable $NPM_CONFIG_GLOBALCONFIG)
• npm's built-in configuration file (/path/to/npm/npmrc)

See npmrc for more details.

Default Configs

Run npm config ls -l to see a set of configuration parameters that are internal to npm, and are defaults if nothing else is specified.

Shorthands and Other CLI Niceties

The following shorthands are parsed on the command-line:

• -a: --all
• --enjoy-by: --before
• -c: --call
• --desc: --description
• -f: --force
• -g: --global
• --iwr: --include-workspace-root
• -L: --location
• -d: --loglevel info
• -s: --loglevel silent
• --silent: --loglevel silent
• --ddd: --loglevel silly
• --dd: --loglevel verbose
• --verbose: --loglevel verbose
• -q: --loglevel warn
• --quiet: --loglevel warn
• -l: --long
• -m: --message
• --local: --no-global
• -n: --no-yes
• --no: --no-yes
• -p: --parseable
• --porcelain: --parseable
• -C: --prefix
• --readonly: --read-only
• --reg: --registry
• -S: --save
• -B: --save-bundle
• -D: --save-dev
• -E: --save-exact
• -O: --save-optional
• -P: --save-prod
• -?: --usage
• -h: --usage
• -H: --usage
• --help: --usage
• -v: --version
• -w: --workspace
• --ws: --workspaces
• -y: --yes

If the specified configuration param resolves unambiguously to a known configuration parameter, then it is expanded to that configuration parameter. For example:

npm ls --par
# same as:
npm ls --parseable

If multiple single-character shorthands are strung together, and the resulting combination is unambiguously not some other configuration param, then it is expanded to its various component pieces. For example:

npm ls -gpld
# same as:
npm ls --global --parseable --long --loglevel info

Config Settings

_auth

• Default: null
• Type: null or String

A basic-auth string to use when authenticating against the npm registry. This will ONLY be used to authenticate against the npm registry. For other registries you will need to scope it like "//other-registry.tld/:_auth"

Warning: This should generally not be set via a command-line option. It is safer to use a registry-provided authentication bearer token stored in the ~/.npmrc file by running npm login.

access

• Default: 'public' for new packages, existing packages it will not change the current level
• Type: null, "restricted", or "public"

If you do not want your scoped package to be publicly viewable (and installable) set --access=restricted.

Unscoped packages can not be set to restricted.

Note: This defaults to not changing the current access level for existing packages. Specifying a value of restricted or public during publish will change the access for an existing package the same way that npm access set status would.

all

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

When running npm outdated and npm ls, setting --all will show all outdated or installed packages, rather than only those directly depended upon by the current project.

allow-same-version

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Prevents throwing an error when npm version is used to set the new version to the same value as the current version.

audit

• Default: true
• Type: Boolean

When "true" submit audit reports alongside the current npm command to the default registry and all registries configured for scopes. See the documentation for npm audit for details on what is submitted.

audit-level

• Default: null
• Type: null, "info", "low", "moderate", "high", "critical", or "none"

The minimum level of vulnerability for npm audit to exit with a non-zero exit code.

auth-type

• Default: "web"
• Type: "legacy" or "web"

What authentication strategy to use with login. Note that if an otp config is given, this value will always be set to legacy.

before

• Default: null
• Type: null or Date

If passed to npm install, will rebuild the npm tree such that only versions that were available on or before the given date are installed. If there are no versions available for the current set of dependencies, the command will error.

If the requested version is a dist-tag and the given tag does not pass the --before filter, the most recent version less than or equal to that tag will be used. For example, foo@latest might install [email protected] even though latest is 2.0.

bin-links

• Default: true
• Type: Boolean

Tells npm to create symlinks (or .cmd shims on Windows) for package executables.

Set to false to have it not do this. This can be used to work around the fact that some file systems don't support symlinks, even on ostensibly Unix systems.

browser

• Default: macOS: "open", Windows: "start", Others: "xdg-open"
• Type: null, Boolean, or String

The browser that is called by npm commands to open websites.

Set to false to suppress browser behavior and instead print urls to terminal.

Set to true to use default system URL opener.

ca

• Default: null
• Type: null or String (can be set multiple times)

The Certificate Authority signing certificate that is trusted for SSL connections to the registry. Values should be in PEM format (Windows calls it "Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER)") with newlines replaced by the string "\n". For example:

ca="-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\nXXXX\nXXXX\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----"

Set to null to only allow "known" registrars, or to a specific CA cert to trust only that specific signing authority.

Multiple CAs can be trusted by specifying an array of certificates:

ca[]="..."
ca[]="..."

See also the strict-ssl config.

cache

• Default: Windows: %LocalAppData%\npm-cache, Posix: ~/.npm
• Type: Path

The location of npm's cache directory.

cafile

• Default: null
• Type: Path

A path to a file containing one or multiple Certificate Authority signing certificates. Similar to the ca setting, but allows for multiple CA's, as well as for the CA information to be stored in a file on disk.

call

• Default: ""
• Type: String

Optional companion option for npm exec, npx that allows for specifying a custom command to be run along with the installed packages.

npm exec --package yo --package generator-node --call "yo node"

cidr

• Default: null
• Type: null or String (can be set multiple times)

This is a list of CIDR address to be used when configuring limited access tokens with the npm token create command.

color

• Default: true unless the NO_COLOR environ is set to something other than '0'
• Type: "always" or Boolean

If false, never shows colors. If "always" then always shows colors. If true, then only prints color codes for tty file descriptors.

commit-hooks

• Default: true
• Type: Boolean

Run git commit hooks when using the npm version command.

cpu

• Default: null
• Type: null or String

Override CPU architecture of native modules to install. Acceptable values are same as cpu field of package.json, which comes from process.arch.

depth

• Default: Infinity if --all is set, otherwise 0
• Type: null or Number

The depth to go when recursing packages for npm ls.

If not set, npm ls will show only the immediate dependencies of the root project. If --all is set, then npm will show all dependencies by default.

description

• Default: true
• Type: Boolean

Show the description in npm search

diff

• Default:
• Type: String (can be set multiple times)

Define arguments to compare in npm diff.

diff-dst-prefix

• Default: "b/"
• Type: String

Destination prefix to be used in npm diff output.

diff-ignore-all-space

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Ignore whitespace when comparing lines in npm diff.

diff-name-only

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Prints only filenames when using npm diff.

diff-no-prefix

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Do not show any source or destination prefix in npm diff output.

Note: this causes npm diff to ignore the --diff-src-prefix and --diff-dst-prefix configs.

diff-src-prefix

• Default: "a/"
• Type: String

Source prefix to be used in npm diff output.

diff-text

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Treat all files as text in npm diff.

diff-unified

• Default: 3
• Type: Number

The number of lines of context to print in npm diff.

dry-run

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Indicates that you don't want npm to make any changes and that it should only report what it would have done. This can be passed into any of the commands that modify your local installation, eg, install, update, dedupe, uninstall, as well as pack and publish.

Note: This is NOT honored by other network related commands, eg dist-tags, owner, etc.

editor

• Default: The EDITOR or VISUAL environment variables, or '%SYSTEMROOT%\notepad.exe' on Windows, or 'vi' on Unix systems
• Type: String

The command to run for npm edit and npm config edit.

engine-strict

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

If set to true, then npm will stubbornly refuse to install (or even consider installing) any package that claims to not be compatible with the current Node.js version.

This can be overridden by setting the --force flag.

expect-result-count

• Default: null
• Type: null or Number

Tells to expect a specific number of results from the command.

This config can not be used with: expect-results

expect-results

• Default: null
• Type: null or Boolean

Tells npm whether or not to expect results from the command. Can be either true (expect some results) or false (expect no results).

This config can not be used with: expect-result-count

fetch-retries

• Default: 2
• Type: Number

The "retries" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages from the registry.

npm will retry idempotent read requests to the registry in the case of network failures or 5xx HTTP errors.

fetch-retry-factor

• Default: 10
• Type: Number

The "factor" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages.

fetch-retry-maxtimeout

• Default: 60000 (1 minute)
• Type: Number

The "maxTimeout" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages.

fetch-retry-mintimeout

• Default: 10000 (10 seconds)
• Type: Number

The "minTimeout" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages.

fetch-timeout

• Default: 300000 (5 minutes)
• Type: Number

The maximum amount of time to wait for HTTP requests to complete.

force

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Removes various protections against unfortunate side effects, common mistakes, unnecessary performance degradation, and malicious input.

• Allow clobbering non-npm files in global installs.
• Allow the npm version command to work on an unclean git repository.
• Allow deleting the cache folder with npm cache clean.
• Allow installing packages that have an engines declaration requiring a different version of npm.
• Allow installing packages that have an engines declaration requiring a different version of node, even if --engine-strict is enabled.
• Allow npm audit fix to install modules outside your stated dependency range (including SemVer-major changes).
• Allow unpublishing all versions of a published package.
• Allow conflicting peerDependencies to be installed in the root project.
• Implicitly set --yes during npm init.
• Allow clobbering existing values in npm pkg
• Allow unpublishing of entire packages (not just a single version).

If you don't have a clear idea of what you want to do, it is strongly recommended that you do not use this option!

foreground-scripts

• Default: false unless when using npm pack or npm publish where it defaults to true
• Type: Boolean

Run all build scripts (ie, preinstall, install, and postinstall) scripts for installed packages in the foreground process, sharing standard input, output, and error with the main npm process.

Note that this will generally make installs run slower, and be much noisier, but can be useful for debugging.

format-package-lock

• Default: true
• Type: Boolean

Format package-lock.json or npm-shrinkwrap.json as a human readable file.

fund

• Default: true
• Type: Boolean

When "true" displays the message at the end of each npm install acknowledging the number of dependencies looking for funding. See npm fund for details.

git

• Default: "git"
• Type: String

The command to use for git commands. If git is installed on the computer, but is not in the PATH, then set this to the full path to the git binary.

git-tag-version

• Default: true
• Type: Boolean

Tag the commit when using the npm version command. Setting this to false results in no commit being made at all.

global

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Operates in "global" mode, so that packages are installed into the prefix folder instead of the current working directory. See folders for more on the differences in behavior.

• packages are installed into the {prefix}/lib/node_modules folder, instead of the current working directory.
• bin files are linked to {prefix}/bin
• man pages are linked to {prefix}/share/man

globalconfig

• Default: The global --prefix setting plus 'etc/npmrc'. For example, '/usr/local/etc/npmrc'
• Type: Path

The config file to read for global config options.

heading

• Default: "npm"
• Type: String

The string that starts all the debugging log output.

https-proxy

• Default: null
• Type: null or URL

A proxy to use for outgoing https requests. If the HTTPS_PROXY or https_proxy or HTTP_PROXY or http_proxy environment variables are set, proxy settings will be honored by the underlying make-fetch-happen library.

if-present

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

If true, npm will not exit with an error code when run is invoked for a script that isn't defined in the scripts section of package.json. This option can be used when it's desirable to optionally run a script when it's present and fail if the script fails. This is useful, for example, when running scripts that may only apply for some builds in an otherwise generic CI setup.

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.