Installation

Prerequisites

If you don't use the standalone script or @pnpm/exe to install pnpm, then you need to have Node.js (at least v16.14) to be installed on your system.

Using a standalone script

You may install pnpm even if you don't have Node.js installed, using the following scripts.

On Windows

Using PowerShell:

iwr https://get.pnpm.io/install.ps1 -useb | iex

On POSIX systems

curl -fsSL https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | sh -

If you don't have curl installed, you would like to use wget:

wget -qO- https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | sh -

tip

You may use the pnpm env command then to install Node.js.

Using Corepack

Since v16.13, Node.js is shipping Corepack for managing package managers. This is an experimental feature, so you need to enable it by running:

info

If you have installed Node.js with pnpm env Corepack won't be installed on your system, you will need to install it separately. See #4029.

corepack enable pnpm

If you installed Node.js using Homebrew, you'll need to install corepack separately:

brew install corepack

This will automatically install pnpm on your system.

You can pin the version of pnpm used on your project using the following command:

corepack use pnpm@latest

This will add a "packageManager" field in your local package.json which will instruct Corepack to always use a specific version on that project. This can be useful if you want reproducability, as all developers who are using Corepack will use the same version as you. When a new version of pnpm is released, you can re-run the above command.

Using npm

We provide two packages of pnpm CLI, pnpm and @pnpm/exe.

• pnpm is a ordinary version of pnpm, which needs Node.js to run.
• @pnpm/exe is packaged with Node.js into an executable, so it may be used on a system with no Node.js installed.

npm install -g pnpm

or

npm install -g @pnpm/exe

tip

Do you wanna use pnpm on CI servers? See: Continuous Integration.

Compatibility

Here is a list of past pnpm versions with respective Node.js version support.

Node.js	pnpm 7	pnpm 8	pnpm 9
Node.js 12	❌	❌	❌
Node.js 14	✔️	❌	❌
Node.js 16	✔️	✔️	❌
Node.js 18	✔️	✔️	✔️
Node.js 20	✔️	✔️	✔️

Troubleshooting

If pnpm is broken and you cannot fix it by reinstalling, you might need to remove it manually from the PATH.

Let's assume you have the following error when running pnpm install:

C:\src>pnpm install
internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:883
  throw err;
  ^



Error: Cannot find module 'C:\Users\Bence\AppData\Roaming\npm\pnpm-global\4\node_modules\pnpm\bin\pnpm.js'
←[90m    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:880:15)←[39m
←[90m    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:725:27)←[39m
←[90m    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:72:12)←[39m
←[90m    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:17:47←[39m {
  code: ←[32m'MODULE_NOT_FOUND'←[39m,
  requireStack: []
}

First, try to find the location of pnpm by running: which pnpm. If you're on Windows, run this command in Git Bash. You'll get the location of the pnpm command, for instance:

$ which pnpm
/c/Program Files/nodejs/pnpm

Now that you know where the pnpm CLI is, open that directory and remove any pnpm-related files (pnpm.cmd, pnpx.cmd, pnpm, etc). Once done, install pnpm again and it should work as expected.

Using a shorter alias

pnpm might be hard to type, so you may use a shorter alias like pn instead.

Adding a permanent alias on POSIX systems

Just put the following line to your .bashrc, .zshrc, or config.fish:

alias pn=pnpm

Adding a permanent alias in Powershell (Windows):

In a Powershell window with admin rights, execute:

notepad $profile.AllUsersAllHosts

In the profile.ps1 file that opens, put:

set-alias -name pn -value pnpm

Save the file and close the window. You may need to close any open Powershell window in order for the alias to take effect.

Uninstalling pnpm

If you need to remove the pnpm CLI from your system and any files it has written to your disk, see Uninstalling pnpm.