iconv-lite converts character encodings using pure JavaScript, turning encoded buffers into JavaScript strings and vice versa. It also provides a streaming API for chunk-by-chunk encode and decode, and supports many common singlebyte and multibyte encodings without native code compilation.
Project status
- Actively maintained: Recent activity on 2026-07-03 (multiple updates), with the most recent upstream push on 2026-07-03, suggests the project is currently active rather than dormant.
- Update cadence: After updates in early 2026 (2026-01-08) there was a gap of about 5 to 6 months, followed by another burst of updates in early July 2026 (v1.0.0-alpha.2 and v0.7.3 on the same day).
AI summary generated
Recent updates
v1.0.0-alpha.2
v1.0.0-alpha.2 makes several codec decoders and label handling changes to match WHATWG and related standards more strictly, and it drops support for Node versions prior to 22. It also adds an opt-in `{ fatal: true }` decode option for TextDecoder-backed encodings, plus more WHATWG encoding label aliases.
BreakingFeaturesv0.7.3
v0.7.3 adds charset alias support for ISO-8859-8 directional variants (iso-8859-8-i and iso-8859-8-e). It also fixes UTF-32 streaming so that code units split across chunk boundaries are decoded correctly, and truncated trailing units are handled by substituting U+FFFD instead of dropping bytes.
Featuresv1.0.0-alpha.1
v1.0.0-alpha.1 makes a major refactor of iconv-lite around a new backend abstraction and switches decoding to use native TextDecoder. It also drops Node versions prior to 18 and removes the safe-buffer dependency, aligning behavior with modern runtime Buffer and web platform APIs.
BreakingFeaturesv0.7.2
v0.7.2 primarily addresses TypeScript typing issues for CommonJS consumers, correcting the way iconv-lite exports are represented in the published .d.ts files. It also contains CI workflow maintenance (bumping GitHub Actions versions) and a packaging change to use the package.json files field instead of .npmignore.
v0.7.1
v0.7.1 is primarily a TypeScript typings update for iconv-lite, with “missing APIs” added to the public type surface. The release notes also include CI workflow updates that bump several GitHub Actions versions.
Featuresv0.7.0
v0.7.0 focuses on correctness improvements in encoding/decoding, especially around UTF-8 streaming edge cases and the encoding lookup logic. It also clarifies that decode() accepts Uint8Array input, and makes a small change related to StringDecoder.end behavior (removing a compatibility check).
BreakingFeatures