CLI & Node.js Settings

CLI Settings#

[no-]color#

• Default: auto
• Type: auto, always, never

Controls colors in the output.

• auto - output uses colors when the standard output is a terminal or TTY.
• always - ignore the difference between terminals and pipes. You’ll rarely want this; in most scenarios, if you want color codes in your redirected output, you can instead pass a --color flag to the pnpm command to force it to use color codes. The default setting is almost always what you’ll want.
• never - turns off colors. This is the setting used by --no-color.

loglevel#

• Default: info
• Type: debug, info, warn, error

Any logs at or higher than the given level will be shown. You can instead pass --silent to turn off all output logs.

useBetaCli#

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

Experimental option that enables beta features of the CLI. This means that you may get some changes to the CLI functionality that are breaking changes, or potentially bugs.

recursiveInstall#

• Default: true
• Type: Boolean

If this is enabled, the primary behaviour of pnpm install becomes that of pnpm install -r, meaning the install is performed on all workspace or subdirectory packages.

Else, pnpm install will exclusively build the package in the current directory.

engineStrict#

• Default: false
• Type: Boolean

If this is enabled, pnpm will not install any package that claims to not be compatible with the current Node version.

Regardless of this configuration, installation will always fail if a project (not a dependency) specifies an incompatible version in its engines field.

npmPath#

• Type: path

The location of the npm binary that pnpm uses for some actions, like publishing.

pmOnFail#

Added in: v11.0.0

• Default: download
• Type: download, error, warn, ignore

Overrides the onFail behavior of both the packageManager field and devEngines.packageManager when the running pnpm version does not match the declared one.

• download — download and run the declared pnpm version (this is the default and matches the previous managePackageManagerVersions: true behavior).
• error — fail the command (equivalent to the previous packageManagerStrictVersion: true).
• warn — print a warning but continue (equivalent to the previous packageManagerStrict: false or COREPACK_ENABLE_STRICT=0).
• ignore — skip the check entirely (equivalent to the previous managePackageManagerVersions: false). Useful when version management is handled by an external tool such as asdf, mise, or Volta.

Can be set via CLI flag, environment variable, or pnpm-workspace.yaml:

pnpm install --pm-on-fail=ignore
pnpm_config_pm_on_fail=ignore pnpm install

```yaml title="pnpm-workspace.yaml" pmOnFail: ignore

This setting replaces the removed `managePackageManagerVersions`, `packageManagerStrict`, and `packageManagerStrictVersion` settings, as well as the `COREPACK_ENABLE_STRICT` environment variable.

Migration:

| Removed setting                       | Replace with                   |
| ------------------------------------- | ------------------------------ |
| `managePackageManagerVersions: true`  | `pmOnFail: download` (default) |
| `managePackageManagerVersions: false` | `pmOnFail: ignore`             |
| `packageManagerStrict: false`         | `pmOnFail: warn`               |
| `packageManagerStrictVersion: true`   | `pmOnFail: error`              |
| `COREPACK_ENABLE_STRICT=0`            | `pmOnFail: warn`               |

See also [`pnpm with`](../cli/with.md) for running pnpm at a specific version without changing this setting.

### ignoreWorkspaceRootCheck

* Default: **false**
* Type: **Boolean**

If this is enabled, running `pnpm install`/`pnpm add` from the project's root 
folder will no longer error when `-w`/`--ignore-workspace-root-check` is not 
provided.

## Node.js Settings

### nodeVersion

* Default: the value returned by **node -v**, without the v prefix
* Type: **exact semver version (not a range)**

The Node.js version to use when checking a package's `engines` setting.

If you want to prevent contributors of your project from adding new incompatible dependencies, use `nodeVersion` and `engineStrict` in a `pnpm-workspace.yaml` file at the root of the project:

```yaml
nodeVersion: 12.22.0
engineStrict: true

This way, even if someone is using Node.js v22, they will not be able to install a new dependency that doesn't support Node.js v12.22.0.

runtimeOnFail#

Added in: v11.0.0

• Default: undefined
• Type: download, error, warn, ignore

Overrides the onFail field of devEngines.runtime (and engines.runtime) in the root project's package.json. This is useful when you want a different local behavior than what is written in the manifest — for instance, forcing pnpm to download the declared runtime even when the manifest sets onFail: "warn":

```yaml title="pnpm-workspace.yaml" runtimeOnFail: download

### nodeDownloadMirrors

Added in: v11.0.0

* Default: **undefined**
* Type: **Record<string, string>**

Configure custom Node.js download mirrors in `pnpm-workspace.yaml`. The keys are release channels (`release`, `rc`, `nightly`, `v8-canary`, etc.) and the values are base URLs.

Here is how pnpm may be configured to download Node.js from a mirror in China:

```yaml
nodeDownloadMirrors:
  release: https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/node/
  rc: https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/node-rc/
  nightly: https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/node-nightly/