Get the Installed Version of an npm Package

Sep 23, 2020

When you want to report a bug in an npm package, most packages ask you for what version of the package you're using. Just looking at package.json isn't enough if you're using semver ranges. If your package.json file says "mongoose": "5.x", '5.x' is not a version, it's a range.

To get what version of Mongoose you currently have installed, run npm list mongoose, or npm ls mongoose for short. For example, here's the result of running npm list mongoose from the Mastering JS git repo. It shows that the currently installed version of Mongoose is v5.10.6.

$ npm list mongoose
masteringjs.io@ /path/to/masteringjs.io
└── mongoose@5.10.6 

$ 

Listing Multiple Packages

Running npm list without a package name prints all installed packages, including their dependencies, with version numbers. The output of npm list is typically too big to read, but the beginning looks like this:

masteringjs.io@ /path/to/masteringjs.io
├── @awaitjs/express@0.3.0
├─┬ @google-cloud/storage@4.3.1
│ ├─┬ @google-cloud/common@2.4.0
│ │ ├── @google-cloud/projectify@1.0.4
...

However, you can make the output more usable by using --depth=0 to only show the version of top-level dependencies.

npm list --depth=0

Below is the beginning of the output of npm list --depth=0 for the Mastering JS git repo:

masteringjs.io@ /path/to/masteringjs.io
├── @awaitjs/express@0.3.0
├── @google-cloud/storage@4.3.1
├── @vue/test-utils@1.0.5
├── acquit@1.1.0
├── acquit-ignore@0.1.1
├── acquit-require@0.1.1
├── adm-zip@0.4.14
├── apollo-server@2.17.0
├── aws-sdk@2.756.0
├── axios@0.19.2

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