xnuk / nanocolors

4x times faster than chalk and use 5x less space in node_modules

Nano Colors

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

Started as a fork of @jorgebucaran’s colorette with hacks from @lukeed’s kleur. See changes between Nano Colors and colorette.

• It is 4 times faster than chalk. Both loading and calls.
• No dependencies. It takes 5 times less space in node_modules than chalk.
• Actively maintained. Used in many big projects like PostCSS or Browserslist.
• Auto-detects color support. You can also toggle color mode manually.
• Tree-shakable. We use a dual ESM/CJS package.
• Supports Node.js ≥ 6 and 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         11,608,010 ops/sec
cli-color        752,419 ops/sec
ansi-colors    3,601,857 ops/sec
kleur         15,185,239 ops/sec
kleur/colors  21,113,231 ops/sec
colorette     19,712,884 ops/sec
nanocolors    47,256,069 ops/sec

Library loading time:

$ ./test/loading.js
chalk          3.465 ms
cli-color     21.849 ms
ansi-colors    1.101 ms
kleur          1.628 ms
kleur/colors   0.508 ms
colorette      1.034 ms
nanocolors     0.486 ms

The space in node_modules including sub-dependencies:

$ ./test/size.js
Data from packagephobia.com
chalk         101 kB
cli-color    1249 kB
ansi-colors    25 kB
kleur          21 kB
colorette      16 kB
nanocolors     16 kB

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

Replacing chalk

1. Replace import and use named exports:

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

2. Unprefix calls:

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

3. 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.