Where does npm install packages?

Question

Can someone tell me where can I find the Node.js modules, which I installed using npm?

Answer 1

From the docs:

Packages are dropped into the node_modules folder under the prefix. When installing locally, this means that you can require("packagename") to load its main module, or require("packagename/lib/path/to/sub/module") to load other modules.

Global installs on Unix systems go to {prefix}/lib/node_modules. Global installs on Windows go to {prefix}/node_modules (that is, no lib folder.)

Scoped packages are installed the same way, except they are grouped together in a sub-folder of the relevant node_modules folder with the name of that scope prefix by the @ symbol, e.g. npm install @myorg/package would place the package in {prefix}/node_modules/@myorg/package. See scope for more details.

If you wish to require() a package, then install it locally.

You can get your {prefix} with npm config get prefix. (Useful when you installed node with nvm).

Read about locally.
Read about globally.

Answer 2

In Ubuntu 14.04 they are installed at

/usr/lib/node_modules

Answer 3

As the other answers say, the best way is to do

npm list -g

However, if you have a large number of npm packages installed, the output of this command could be very long and a big pain to scroll up (sometimes it's not even possible to scroll that far back).

In this case, pipe the output to the more program, like this

npm list -g | more

Answer 4

If a module was installed with the global (-g) flag, you can get the parent location by running:

npm get prefix

or

npm ls -g --depth=0

which will print the location along with the list of installed modules.

Answer 5

Btw, npm will look for node_modules in parent folders (up to very root) if can not find in local.

Answer 6

• Echo the config: npm config ls or npm config list

• Show all the config settings: npm config ls -l or npm config ls --json

• Print the effective node_modules folder: npm root or npm root -g

• Print the local prefix: npm prefix or npm prefix -g

  (This is the closest parent directory to contain a package.json file or node_modules directory)

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• npm-config | npm Documentation
• npm-root | npm Documentation
• npm-prefix | npm Documentation