Nano Colors

A tiny and fast Node.js library for formatting terminal text with ANSI colors.

Fast. It is 70% faster than chalk.
Lightweight. It loads 2 times faster than chalk.
Actively maintained. Used in many big projects like PostCSS or Browserslist.
No dependencies. It takes 5 times less space in node_modules than chalk.
Auto-detects color support. You can also toggle color mode manually.
Tree-shakable. We use a dual ESM/CJS package.
Support universal Node.js/browser projects.

import { green, bold } from 'nanocolors'

console.log(
  green(`Task ${bold('1')} was finished`)
)

Benchmarks

Function calling time:

$ ./test/benchmark.js
chalk         8,142,778 ops/sec
ansi-colors   2,626,780 ops/sec
kleur        11,299,102 ops/sec
colorette    14,852,996 ops/sec
nanocolors   14,897,991 ops/sec

Library loading time:

$ ./test/loading.js
chalk        6.163 ms
ansi-colors  1.603 ms
kleur        1.771 ms
colorette    0.848 ms
nanocolors   0.571 ms

The space in node_modules including sub-dependencies:

$ ./test/size.js
chalk         192 KB
ansi-colors    40 KB
kleur          44 KB
colorette      32 KB
nanocolors     36 KB

Test configuration: ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9, Fedora 34, Node.js 16.8.

Replacing `chalk`

Replace import and use named exports:

- import chalk from 'chalk'
+ import { red, bold } from 'nanocolors'

Unprefix calls:
```
- chalk.red(text)
+ red(text)
```

Replace chains to nested calls:

- chalk.red.bold(text)
+ red(bold(text))

API

Individual Colors

Nano Colors exports functions:

Colors	Background Colors	Modifiers
`black`	`bgBlack`	dim
`red`	`bgRed`	bold
`green`	`bgGreen`	hidden
`yellow`	`bgYellow`	italic
`blue`	`bgBlue`	underline
`magenta`	`bgMagenta`	~~strikethrough~~
`cyan`	`bgCyan`	reset
`white`	`bgWhite`
`gray`

Functions are not chainable. You need to wrap it inside each other:

import { black, bgYellow } from 'nanocolors'

console.log(bgYellow(black(' WARN ')))

Functions will use colors only if Nano Colors auto-detect that current environment supports colors.

You can get support level in isColorSupported:

import { isColorSupported } from 'nanocolors'

if (isColorSupported) {
  console.log('With colors')
}

Conditional Support

You can manually switch colors on/off and override color support auto-detection:

import { createColors } from 'nanocolors'

const { red } = createColors(options.enableColors)

On undefined argument, createColors will use value from color support auto-detection.

Thanks

API design was inspired by colorette and kleur.

f0rmat1k/nanocolors