The tiniest and the fastest library for terminal output formatting with ANSI colors
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.
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'));"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 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 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.
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_COLOR friendly.Read full docs on GitHub.
FAQs
The tiniest and the fastest library for terminal output formatting with ANSI colors
The npm package picocolors receives a total of 82,737,235 weekly downloads. As such, picocolors popularity was classified as popular.
We found that picocolors demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
Did you know?
Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.
Security News
ECMAScript 2025 introduces Iterator Helpers, Set methods, JSON modules, and more in its latest spec update approved by Ecma in June 2025.
Security News
A new Node.js homepage button linking to paid support for EOL versions has sparked a heated discussion among contributors and the wider community.
Research
North Korean threat actors linked to the Contagious Interview campaign return with 35 new malicious npm packages using a stealthy multi-stage malware loader.