This wasn't an option for us because as an org we used their recommended hook (1) to automatically change node versions when switching directories, but it effectively undoes the lazy loading.
With mise you get the behaviour of automatically switching when you change directories effectively for free.
1. https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm#zsh
Edit: unless you aliased it to `node` or `npm`, which would be fine I guess but super annoying if you ran node or npm commands often. It is not worth the hassle, no one should use nvm in 2026 imo
In Life is too short for a slow terminalnvm-sh
nvm
Shell2011–2026
nvm-sh / nvm
nvm
Node Version Manager - POSIX-compliant bash script to manage multiple active node.js versions.
40Distinct people
42Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
96.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Node Version Manager - POSIX-compliant bash script to manage multiple active node.js versions.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- tj/n · linked in 5 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year42 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2011-04-02 23:14:24 UTC to 2026-06-08 16:40:06 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Node Version Manager
Table of Contents
Intro
About
Installing and Updating
Install & Update Script
Additional Notes
Installing in Docker
Installing in Docker for CICD-Jobs
Troubleshooting on Linux
Troubleshooting on macOS
Ansible
Verify Installation
Important Notes
Git Install
Manual Install
Manual Upgrade
Usage
Long-term Support
Version Categories
Migrating Global Packages While Installing
Migrating Global Packages Between Installed Versions
Offline Install
Default Global Packages From File While Installing
io.js
System Version of Node
Listing Versions
Setting Custom Colors
Persisting custom colors
Suppressing colorized output
Restoring PATH
Set default node version
Use a mirror of node binaries
Pass Authorization header to mirror
Platforms without official binaries
.nvmrc
Deeper Shell Integration
Calling nvm use automatically in a directory with a .nvmrc file
bash
zsh
fish
Running Tests
Environment variables
Bash Completion
Usage
Compatibility Issues
Installing nvm on Alpine Linux
Alpine Linux 3.13+
Alpine Linux 3.5 - 3.12
Uninstalling / Removal
Manual Uninstall
Docker For Development Environment
Problems
macOS Troubleshooting
WSL Troubleshooting
Maintainers
Project Support
Enterprise Support
License
Copyright notice
Intro
nvm allows you to quickly install and use different versions of node via the command line.
Example:
$ nvm install 24
Now using node v24.14.0 (npm v11.9.0)
$ node -v
v24.14.0
$ nvm use 22
Now using node v22.22.1 (npm v10.9.4)
$ node -v
v22.22.1
$ nvm use 20
Now using node v20.20.1 (npm v10.8.2)
$ node -v
v20.20.1
Simple as that!
About
nvm is a version manager for node.js, designed to be installed per-user, and invoked per-shell. nvm works on any POSIX-compliant shell (sh, dash, ksh, zsh, bash), in particular on these platforms: unix, macOS, and Windows WSL.
Installing and Updating
Install & Update Script
To install or update nvm, you should run the install script. To do that, you may either download and run the script manually, or use the following cURL or Wget command:
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.8/install.sh | bash
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.8/install.sh | bash
Running either of the above commands downloads a script and runs it. The script clones the nvm repository to ~/.nvm, and attempts to add the source lines from the snippet below to the correct profile file (~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, or ~/.profile). If you find the install script is updating the wrong profile file, set the $PROFILE env var to the profile file’s path, and then rerun the installation script.
export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm
Additional Notes
If the environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is present, it will place the nvm files there.
You can add --no-use to the end of the above script to postpone using nvm until you manually use it:
export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" --no-use # This loads nvm, without auto-using the default version
You can customize the install source, directory, profile, and version using the NVM_SOURCE, NVM_DIR, PROFILE, and NODE_VERSION variables.
Eg: curl ... | NVM_DIR="path/to/nvm". Ensure that the NVM_DIR does not contain a trailing slash.
The installer can use git, curl, or wget to download nvm, whichever is available.
You can instruct the installer to not edit your shell config (for example if you already get completions via a zsh nvm plugin) by setting PROFILE=/dev/null before running the install.sh script. Here's an example one-line command to do that: PROFILE=/dev/null bash -c 'curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.8/install.sh | bash'
Installing in Docker
When invoking bash as a non-interactive shell, like in a Docker container, none of the regular profile files are sourced. In order to use nvm, node, and npm like normal, you can instead specify the special BASH_ENV variable, which bash sources when invoked non-interactively.
# Use bash for the shell
SHELL ["/bin/bash", "-o", "pipefail", "-c"]
# Create a script file sourced by both interactive and non-interactive bash shells
ENV BASH_ENV="${HOME:-/root}/.bash_env"
RUN touch "${BASH_ENV}"
RUN echo '. "${BASH_ENV}"' >> ~/.bashrc
# Download and install nvm
RUN curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.8/install.sh | PROFILE="${BASH_ENV}" bash
RUN echo node > .nvmrc
RUN nvm install
Installing in Docker for CICD-Jobs
More robust, works in CI/CD-Jobs. Can be run in interactive and non-interactive containers.
See #3531.
FROM ubuntu:latest
ARG NODE_VERSION=20
# install curl
RUN apt update && apt install curl -y
# install nvm
RUN curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.8/install.sh | bash
# set env
ENV NVM_DIR="${HOME:-/root}/.nvm"
# install node
RUN bash -c "source $NVM_DIR/nvm.sh && nvm install $NODE_VERSION"
# set ENTRYPOINT for reloading nvm-environment
ENTRYPOINT ["bash", "-c", "source $NVM_DIR/nvm.sh && exec \"$@\"", "--"]
# set cmd to bash
CMD ["/bin/bash"]
This example defaults to installation of nodejs version 20.x.y. Optionally you can easily override the version with docker build args like:
docker build -t nvmimage --build-arg NODE_VERSION=19 .
After creation of the image you can start container interactively and run commands, for example:
docker run --rm -it nvmimage
root@0a6b5a237c14:/# nvm -v
0.40.8
root@0a6b5a237c14:/# node -v
v19.9.0
root@0a6b5a237c14:/# npm -v
9.6.3
Noninteractive example:
user@host:/tmp/test $ docker run --rm -it nvmimage node -v
v19.9.0
user@host:/tmp/test $ docker run --rm -it nvmimage npm -v
9.6.3
Troubleshooting on Linux
On Linux, after running the install script, if you get nvm: command not found or see no feed
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
42 sourcesI'm glad to see that I'm not the only person worried about this. It's a pretty glaring bit of attack surface if you ask me. I chuckled when I saw you used nvm as an example in your readme. I've pestered nvm about this sort of thing in the past (https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/issues/3349).
I'm a little uncertain about your threat model though. If you've got an SSL-tampering adversary that can serve you a malicious script when you expected the original, don't you think they'd also be sophisticated enough to instead cause the authentic script to subsequently download a malicious payload?
I know that nobody wants to deal with the headaches associated with keeping track of cryptographic hashes for everything you receive over a network (nix is, among other things, a tool for doing this). But I'm afraid it's the only way to actually solve th
Read the rest
is problem:
1. get remote inputs, check against hashes that were committed to source control
2. make a sandbox that doesn't have internet access
3. do the compute in that sandbox (to ensure it doesn't phone home for a payload which you haven't verified the hash of)
I followed the standard nvm install process, to get it loaded from my .zshrc
I noticed a second or two in lag between launching the terminal and getting a shell prompt. Commenting out the nvm load as a test removed the delay. I installed fnm, aliased it to be nvm, and everything is snappy. Also nicer if you use tooling to 'nvm use' when changing into a project directory.
There are a few issue threads such as this one : https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/issues/2724
BTW, this blog post was great for finding the culprit if there is zsh startup latency : https://stevenvanbael.com/profiling-zsh-startup
In Mako – fast, production-grade web bundler based on RustView their obstinance: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/issues/794
8 years later and despite much support for the `.node-version` file.
Someone else started using the .node-version file years ago, and because all open source packages won't form a committee to standardize this file, nvm will not support it.
They have a lot of hills. JS Private Properties was another.
In 4B If StatementsAh good to know, thank you! Meanwhile I found it, it was the awk from Debian 10 that lacked `length(array)`, see the related nvm pr [1].
[1]: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/pull/2917/
In The Awk Programming Language, Second EditionAwk is really great, for those knowing nvm [1], I used awk to make `nvm ls-remote` run more than 10 times faster [2] by replacing the related shell script with around 60 lines of awk script [3], and I was quite happy with the improvement.
It's not really a one-liner, neither something big, but one can take that as an example regarding that awk is really not just for one-liners.
Meanwhile having `--csv` support is really nice. I'd also like to see things like a builtin `length` function to be standard.
[1]: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/
[2]: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/pull/2827/
[3]: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/blob/9a769630d7/nvm.sh#L1703-L...
In The Awk Programming Language, Second EditionManage multiple npm versions at once using a node package manager manager such as:
Node Version Manager - POSIX-compliant bash script to manage multiple active node.js versions
https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm
Volta - The Hassle-Free JavaScript Tool Manager
https://volta.sh/
asdf - Manage multiple runtime versions with a single CLI tool
https://asdf-vm.com/
Eventually we might need a node package manager manager manager to make sure we are using the right one for a project lol
In Python is two languages nowYeah, I use https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm
In Why is the JavaScript ecosystem like this?Try doing this on a 5 year old project. You'll very likely end up in dependency hell.
There is a solution though - use of nvm and .nvmrc (to control the version of node and npm that you use), and use of npm ci (which installs packages as they were at the time, rather than installing newer versions than specified in package-lock.json (because too many devs rarely ever pin versions) instead of npm install / npm i).
nvm (Node Version manager): https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm
npm ci: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v6/commands/npm-ci
In Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed themEdit: actually just checked what's wrong again.
When running with cmd, I get an error about Python 2 being used instead of Python3:
C:\Users\USERNAME>pip --version
Fatal error in launcher: Unable to create process using '"c:\python27\python.exe" "C:\Python27\Scripts\pip.exe" '
C:\Users\USERNAME>pip --version
When running with Git Bash, I don't get any output whatsoever:
USER@MACHINE MINGW65 ~
$ pip --version
USER@MACHINE MINGW65 ~
As it turns out, PATH has both Python 3 and Python 2 in it. Why is there also Python 2 on the machine? A legacy project that needs testing whilst migrating it over? Helping someone with an older script? Who even knows at this point.
My takeaways:
1. following the first Google result (python.org and the official installer) wasn't the problem here
2. Python 2 and Python 3 don't play nicely toge
Read the rest
ther, at all, might need to remove the old one from PATH to avoid headaches
3. Specifying the Python interpreter to use (my example above, or better yet explicit python3) solved the issue
4. Certain shells are weird sometimes, go figure
5. What you're saying about pyenv is probably a good idea
Or maybe even something like PyCharm which lets you specify the runtime per project (much like you could specify which JDK to use with IntelliJ for Java).
Hopefully by the time Python 4 comes out and breaks everything, we'll already have figured out use cases like this (just kidding, sort of).
Node feels much the same way, especially because it moves ahead a bit more quickly with its releases and has less backwards compatibility when compared to Python. Somehow projects like Node Version Manager (https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm) didn't really seem to gain much traction.
I find `nvm.sh` pretty invaluable for juggling node versions - https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm#intro
In Show HN: IndigoStack – a new native macOS app for local web developmentthis version check https://github.com/bdefore/dotfiles/blob/53a2e00c236a2d581ac... is much faster than the officially suggested https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm#automatically-call-nvm-use (or at least used to be)
In Volta vs. Nvm for JavaScript ToolingI am currently aware of the following Javascript "version managers":
- NVM: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm
- N: https://github.com/tj/n
- Volta: https://volta.sh/
- FNM: https://fnm.vercel.app/
- ASDF-VM: https://asdf-vm.com/
I started with NVM, which is so slow that I'm confused (and maybe even impressed) as to how it's possible to be so slow.
Then I switched to FNM, which is delightfully not-slow.
Then I switched to Volta, because it supports installing standalone "tools" other than just Node, like Yarn and the various LSP servers that I use. If it's slower than FNM, it's not enough slower to matter to me.
I tried N but don't use it. It seems to have a more "interactive" UI than FNM or Volta, so use N if you like that kind of thing.
I haven't used ASDF-VM, which apparently supports several languages/interpreters/compilers, including Node
Read the rest
. I have been meaning to try it. I am somewhat skeptical that a general-purpose "do everything" tool would be better than a collection of purpose-built tools like Pyenv, Rbenv, Plenv, NVM/FNM/Volta/N, etc. etc., but people seem to really like it.
NVM – Package for Ubuntu PPA and Backport
1 points · Open discussionVery happy with my MacBook Air M1, working mostly on TypeScript Node.js and React projects.
The first couple of weeks I used the Rosetta Terminal as described in this and many other blog post, until I found out this was not necessary at all for Node.js as described over here: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/issues/2350#issuecomment-73413....
The only blocking issue was Docker so I used VSCode remote until they released the M1 preview. So with that and the release of HomeBrew 3.0.0 last month and many macOS apps adding M1 support, everything is now running smoothly for me and I think it's a really great machine to use as a developer.
Also, the battery life truly is amazing, and boy am I glad I finally got rid of that touch bar and that ridiculous butterfly keyboard.
In Experience with Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro as a Software DeveloperShowing the 15 most recent of 42 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.