@inquirer/ansi

@inquirer/ansi

A lightweight package providing ANSI escape sequences for terminal cursor manipulation and screen clearing.

Installation

yarn	pnpm
yarn add @inquirer/ansi	pnpm add @inquirer/ansi
bun	deno
bun add @inquirer/ansi	deno add npm:@inquirer/ansi
npm
npm install @inquirer/ansi

Usage

import {
  cursorUp,
  cursorDown,
  cursorTo,
  cursorLeft,
  cursorHide,
  cursorShow,
  eraseLines,
} from '@inquirer/ansi';

// Move cursor up 3 lines
process.stdout.write(cursorUp(3));

// Move cursor to specific position (x: 10, y: 5)
process.stdout.write(cursorTo(10, 5));

// Hide/show cursor
process.stdout.write(cursorHide);
process.stdout.write(cursorShow);

// Clear 5 lines
process.stdout.write(eraseLines(5));

Or when used inside an inquirer prompt:

import { cursorHide } from '@inquirer/ansi';
import { createPrompt } from '@inquirer/core';

export default createPrompt((config, done: (value: void) => void) => {
  return `Choose an option${cursorHide}`;
});

API

Cursor Movement

• cursorUp(count?: number) - Move cursor up by count lines (default: 1)
• cursorDown(count?: number) - Move cursor down by count lines (default: 1)
• cursorTo(x: number, y?: number) - Move cursor to position (x, y). If y is omitted, only moves horizontally
• cursorLeft - Move cursor to beginning of line

Cursor Visibility

• cursorHide - Hide the cursor
• cursorShow - Show the cursor

Screen Manipulation

• eraseLines(count: number) - Clear count lines and position cursor at the beginning of the first cleared line

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Simon Boudrias (twitter: @vaxilart)
Licensed under the MIT license.

Similar packages

Other packages similar to @inquirer/ansi

ansi-escapes

Provides a broad collection of ANSI escape sequences for terminal operations, including cursor control and screen clearing. It overlaps closely in purpose, while @inquirer/ansi offers a focused API used by Inquirer.

chalk

Styles terminal text with colors and formatting such as bold or underline. It is more focused on styling text than cursor movement or erasing terminal content.

cli-cursor

Provides simple utilities to hide and show the terminal cursor. It covers a narrower use case than @inquirer/ansi, which also supports other terminal controls.

strip-ansi

Removes ANSI escape sequences from strings. It complements rather than replaces @inquirer/ansi, which is used to create terminal control sequences.