pnpm/pnpm11/docs/settings/cli.md

id, title, sidebar_label

id	title	sidebar_label
cli	CLI & Node.js Settings	CLI & Node.js

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.

reporter

Selects the log reporter. See --reporter for the available reporters and terminal-dependent defaults.

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.

A part of the configuration pnpm cannot read does not stop it from switching to the declared pnpm version, which reads the configuration itself. pnpm leaves out the file or setting it cannot read, and every other source still applies, so it switches only when the pmOnFail from the environment or a readable file is download.

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

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 for running pnpm at a specific version without changing this setting.

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:

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":

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:

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

Since v11.26.0, downloads from a mirror carry the npm registry credentials configured for that URL, including bearer tokens, basic auth, and tokenHelper, so a mirror behind an authenticating proxy works without a separate credential.