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npm · #859 most downloaded on npm
Wrapper library for directory and file watching.
Last release 3 months ago
11 Jun 2026
Release timing varies
gaps range from 2 weeks to 1.8 years
Some releases are documented
notes for 25 of 45 stable releases
Nothing withdrawn
no release was ever pulled
12 years old
61 releases · first in 2014
fix: retry fs.lstat on transient EBUSY errors instead of emitting a spurious remove event (fixes #223 , #44 ). The retry count is controlled by the WA
fix: retry fs.lstat on transient EBUSY errors instead of emitting a spurious remove event (fixes #223, #44). The retry count is controlled by the WATCHPACK_RETRIES environment variable (default: 3; set to 0 or "false" to disable retrying). (by @alexander-akait in #293)
Improve perfomance for ignored and improve perfomance for reduce plan. (by @alexander-akait in #289)
perf: speed up ignored matchers (~35–45% faster on POSIX paths) and reducePlan (~20–40% faster on medium and large plans). Also adds a tinybench suite under bench/ and a CodSpeed GitHub Actions workflow to catch future regressions. (by @alexander-akait in #287)
fix: don't log "Watchpack Error (initial scan)" for unreadable entries inside a watched parent directory, e.g. pagefile.sys on WSL or /efi on Linux (fixes #187). EACCES / ENODEV (and EINVAL on Windows) errors are now handled like EPERM / ENOENT / EBUSY: the entry is recorded as missing and the scan continues silently. (by @alexander-akait in #298)
fix: prevent unbounded watcher growth when a symlinked directory points back to one of its own ancestors (e.g. a/b/loop -> ..) with followSymlinks: true. Such symlinks are now recorded as plain entries instead of being descended into; symlinks pointing outside the watched tree (#231) behave as before. (by @alexander-akait in #297)
One column per quarter.
Fixes typo in typescript types
Features Added types
Node.js v24+ changed permission access error codes
ignore listening for the directory itself to be deleted
handle empty strings and arrays in ignored
do not report directory as initial missing on the second watch
respect filesystem accuracy more accurately
report time info for directories correctly
allow to grab separate file and directory time info objects
ignored optionNothing published for this version
fix warnings with ENOENT when symlinks are resolved by watchpack
use creation time instead of modified time for folder entries that are only watch for existence
fix incorrectly reported changes when attaching to an already watched directory
Old API is also accepted without warning (it may be deprecated in the next major)
ignored optionfollowSymlinks optionremove event when files or directories are not found during initial scan
missing items/RegExp/ for ignored optionWATCHPACK_RECURSIVE_WATCHER_LOGGING env var is setremovals and changes in the aggregated event no longer both contain a fileaggregateTimeout: 0 now works correctlyprocess.nextTick when unneeded on watcher creationadd logging of recursive watchers when WATCHPACK_RECURSIVE_WATCHER_LOGGING env var is set
WATCHPACK_RECURSIVE_WATCHER_LOGGING env var is setlimit maximum number of os watchers on OSX to 2000 and on windows to 10000
fix handling of renames that only change the casing of files on a case-insensitive filesystem
don't fire change events when files are only read
Support /RegExp/ for ignored option
/RegExp/ for ignored optionaggregateTimeout: 0 now works correctlyOld API is also accepted without warning (it may be deprecated in the next major)
remove event when files or directories are not found during initial scan
missing itemsremovals and changes in the aggregated event no longer both contain a fileincrease minimum node.js version to 10
process.nextTick when unneeded on watcher creationallow all Iterables instead of only Array
# Features * add followSymlinks option
followSymlinks optionNormalize readdir result to NFC
move dependency to devDependency
Polling no longer uses fs.watchFile but polls the directory directly
ignored optionfix a bug where scanning got stuck
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removed watchpack-chokidar2 notsup warning
remove unneeded files from package
force update to latest chokidar version for important bugfix
support chokidar 2 and 3 for node.js 6 - 14 support
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force upgrade chokidar for security reasons
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set polling interval for binary files too
Fixed watch for directories containing special glob characters
# Bugfixes: * readd mtimes property
# Bugfixes: * track removal times
don't adjust fs accuracy on inital scan
Fix watch callback being called twice during initial build.
watch callback being called twice during initial build.async dependency.Nothing published for this version
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