Node.js version management: no subshells, no profile setup, no convoluted API, just simple.

(Note: n is not supported natively on Windows.)

• n – Interactively Manage Your Node.js Versions
  • Installation
    • Third Party Installers
  • Installing Node Versions
  • Specifying Node Versions
  • Removing Versions
  • Using Downloaded Node Versions Without Reinstalling
  • Miscellaneous
  • Custom Source
  • Custom Architecture
  • Optional Environment Variables

Since you probably already have node, the easiest way to install n is through npm:

npm install -g n

Alternatively, you can clone this repo and

make install

to install n to bin/n of the directory specified in the environment variable $PREFIX, which defaults to /usr/local (note that you will likely need to use sudo). To install n in a custom location (such as $CUSTOM_LOCATION/bin/n), run PREFIX=$CUSTOM_LOCATION make install.

Once installed, n caches node versions in subdirectory n/versions of the directory specified in environment variable N_PREFIX, which defaults to /usr/local; and the active node version is installed directly in N_PREFIX.

To avoid requiring sudo for n and npm global installs, it is suggested you either install to your home directory using N_PREFIX, or take ownership of the system directories:

# make cache folder (if missing) and take ownership
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/n
sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/n
# take ownership of node install destination folders
sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/bin /usr/local/lib /usr/local/include /usr/local/share

On macOS with Homebrew you can install the n formula.

brew install n

On Linux and macOS, n-install allows installation directly from GitHub; for instance:

curl -L https://git.io/n-install | bash

n-install sets both PREFIX and N_PREFIX to $HOME/n, installs n to $HOME/n/bin, modifies the initialization files of supported shells to export N_PREFIX and add $HOME/n/bin to the PATH, and installs the latest LTS node version.

As a result, both n itself and all node versions it manages are hosted inside a single, optionally configurable directory, which you can later remove with the included n-uninstall script. n-update updates n itself to the latest version. See the n-install repo for more details.

Simply execute n <version> to download and install a version of node. If <version> has already been downloaded, n will install from its cache.

n 10.16.0
n lts

Execute n on its own to view your downloaded versions, and install the selected version.

$ n

  node/4.9.1
ο node/8.11.3
  node/10.15.0

Use up/down arrow keys to select a version, return key to install, q to quit

(You can also use j and k to navigate up or down without using arrows.)

If the active node version does not change after install, try opening a new shell in case seeing a stale version.

There are a variety of ways of specifying the target node version for n commands. Most commands use the latest matching version, and n ls-remote lists multiple matching versions.

Numeric version numbers can be complete or incomplete, with an optional leading v.

• 4.9.1
• 8: 8.x.y versions
• v6.1: 6.1.x versions

There are labels for two especially useful versions:

• lts: newest Long Term Support official release
• latest, current: newest official release

There is support for release streams:

• argon, boron, carbon: codenames for LTS release streams

The last form is for specifying other releases available using the name of the remote download folder optionally followed by the complete or incomplete version.

• chakracore-release/latest
• nightly
• test/v11.0.0-test20180528
• rc/10

Remove some cached versions:

n rm 0.9.4 v0.10.0

Removing all cached versions except the current version:

n prune

Remove the installed node and npm (does not affect the cached version). This can be useful to revert to the system version of node (if in a different location), or if you no longer wish to use node and npm, or are switching to a different way of managing them.

n uninstall

There are three commands for working directly with your downloaded versions of node, without reinstalling.

You can show the path to the downloaded version:

$ n which 6.14.3
/usr/local/n/versions/6.14.3/bin/node

Or run a downloaded node version with the n run command:

n run 8.11.3 --debug some.js

Or execute a command with PATH modified so node and npm will be from the downloaded node version. (NB: this npm will be working with a different and empty global node_modules directory, and you should not install global modules this way.)

n exec 10 my-script --fast test

Command line help can be obtained from n --help.

List matching remote versions available for download:

n ls-remote lts
n ls-remote latest
n lsr 10
n --all lsr

List downloaded versions in cache:

n ls

Display diagnostics to help resolve problems:

n doctor

If you would like to use a different node mirror which has the same layout as the default https://nodejs.org/dist/, you can define N_NODE_MIRROR. The most common example is users in China can define:

export N_NODE_MIRROR=https://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/node

There is also N_NODE_DOWNLOAD_MIRROR for a different mirror with same layout as the default https://nodejs.org/download

By default n picks the binaries matching your system architecture, e.g. n will download 64 bit binaries for a 64 bit system. You can override this by using the -a or --arch option.

Download and use latest 32 bit version of node:

n --arch x86 latest

The n command downloads and installs to /usr/local by default, but you may override this location by defining N_PREFIX. To change the location to say $HOME/.n, add lines like the following to your shell initialization file:

export N_PREFIX=$HOME/.n
export PATH=$N_PREFIX/bin:$PATH

By default n downloads archives from the mirror site which have been compressed with gzip. You can switch to using the xz compressed archives by defining N_USE_XZ.

export N_USE_XZ=true

In brief:

• N_NODE_MIRROR: See Custom source
• N_NODE_DOWNLOAD_MIRROR: See Custom source
• support for NO_COLOR and CLICOLOR=0 for controlling use of ANSI color codes
• N_MAX_REMOTE_MATCHES to change the default ls-remote maximum of 20 matching versions