Chokidar is a minimal, efficient, cross-platform file watching library for Node.js, built on the core `fs` module. It turns low-level filesystem events into normalized add, change, and unlink events, with options for recursive watching, filtering, symlink handling, and support for atomic and chunked writes.
Project status
- Maintenance status: The repo shows an upstream push on 2026-05-12, and the most recent published update listed is 5.0.0 (2025-11-25), suggesting ongoing development rather than maintenance-only.
- Update cadence: After 4.0.3 (2024-12-18), 5.0.0 arrived in late 2025 (2025-11-25), and the latest known published update is about 6+ months old as of 2026-06-09, though upstream activity continues in between.
AI summary generated
Recent updates
5.0.0
Chokidar 5.0.0 is a major release focused on switching the package to ESM-only and raising the minimum supported Node.js version to 20.19. It also includes a TypeScript typing precision pass, a small performance tweak around double-slash regex handling, and updates around readdirp being ESM-only v5.
BreakingSecurity4.0.3
Release 4.0.3 updates chokidar's TypeScript typings related to the arguments emitted by FSWatcher events. The release notes describe it as a fix to the TypeScript type of the emitted args, but the diff shows more specific type refactoring around error versus non-error payloads.
4.0.2
chokidar 4.0.2 includes a FreeBSD-related fix for “safe-edit” behavior, adjusts backend logic to address inode-change detection on FreeBSD, and removes build artifacts/references for sourcemaps. It also changes the TypeScript typing of the FSWatcher EventEmitter interface to strongly type event payloads.
Features4.0.1
Chokidar 4.0.1 is primarily presented as a TypeScript typing cleanup release. The code diff, however, shows a few runtime-relevant adjustments around path normalization/unification and watcher close promise handling, in addition to type-only changes.
4.0.0
Chokidar 4.0.0 is a major rewrite that removes glob support and the bundled fsevents implementation. It also converts the codebase to TypeScript and publishes as a hybrid CommonJS/ESM package with a higher minimum Node.js version requirement.
Breaking3.6.0
Release 3.6.0 primarily fixes chokidar's macOS fsevents behavior, including correcting the internal readyCount logic and handling the fsevents flag indicating that chokidar must scan subdirectories. It also updates the TypeScript definitions for FSWatcher to be compatible with Node.js versions 16 and above.
3.5.3
chokidar 3.5.3 includes TypeScript definition improvements and a fix for symlink handling when the symlink target no longer exists. It also updates CI to run dtslinting and refreshes the chokidar-cli link in the README.
3.5.2
Release 3.5.2 is documented as a small dependency bump to silence vulnerability warnings for glob-parent. However, the actual diff includes additional runtime behavior changes (IBM i polling default), logic changes in the fsevents symlink/path handling, and several other dependency and test-related updates that are not mentioned in the release notes.
3.5.1
Release 3.5.1 is described only as a small symlink fix. The code diff shows an internal change to how chokidar tracks symlink paths, plus additional test coverage for symlink folder behavior and circular symlink error handling.
3.5.0
Chokidar 3.5.0 adds support for ARM Macs with Apple Silicon. It also claims a fix for a bug where symlink state was not cleaned up when the target path was deleted (issue #1042).
Features