picocolors

What is picocolors?

The picocolors npm package is a minimalistic library for coloring terminal text. It provides a simple and efficient way to add color to console output in Node.js applications. The package is designed to be lightweight and fast, making it an excellent choice for projects that require colored output without the overhead of more feature-rich libraries.

What are picocolors's main functionalities?

Text coloring

This feature allows you to color text output in the terminal. The example demonstrates how to make text appear red.

"const pico = require('picocolors');\nconsole.log(pico.red('This text is red'));"

Text styling

This feature enables you to apply styles such as bolding to your text output. The example shows how to make text bold.

"const pico = require('picocolors');\nconsole.log(pico.bold('This text is bold'));"

Background coloring

With this feature, you can set the background color of your text output. The example illustrates setting a green background for the text.

"const pico = require('picocolors');\nconsole.log(pico.bgGreen('This text has a green background'));"

Other packages similar to picocolors

chalk

Chalk is a popular npm package for coloring and styling terminal output. It offers a more extensive API compared to picocolors, including chainable and composable styles. However, picocolors focuses on being lightweight and fast, making it a better choice for minimalistic needs or performance-critical applications.

ansi-colors

ansi-colors is another library for styling terminal text. It is similar to picocolors in its focus on performance and a minimalistic API. However, ansi-colors provides a slightly different API design and additional features for styling text, which might make it a preferable choice depending on the developer's needs.

kleur

Kleur is a lightweight terminal color library with a focus on performance, similar to picocolors. It offers a simple API for coloring text but does not include some of the more advanced styling capabilities found in chalk. Kleur and picocolors are both excellent choices for projects that prioritize speed and simplicity.

README

picocolors

The tiniest and the fastest library for terminal output formatting with ANSI colors.

import pc from "picocolors"

console.log(
  pc.green(`How are ${pc.italic(`you`)} doing?`)
)

• No dependencies.
• 14 times smaller and 2 times faster than chalk.
• Used by popular tools like PostCSS, SVGO, Stylelint, and Browserslist.
• Node.js v6+ & browsers support. Support for both CJS and ESM projects.
• TypeScript type declarations included.
• NO_COLOR friendly.

Docs

Read full docs on GitHub.

Changelog

v1.1.1

• Moved TypeScript declarations to a d.ts file (#82)
• Reworked color detection algorithm to properly work with empty strings in NO_COLOR and FORCE_COLOR env variables (#87)
• Eliminated require() call to make the package compatible with some tools (#87)