How To Install NVM on macOS with Homebrew

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    The NVM (Node Version Manager) is a shell script used for installing and managing Node.js on a Linux-based system. The macOS users can install NVM using the homebrew.

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    This tutorial helps you to install NVM on your macOS system and manage Node.js versions.

    Prerequisites

    You must have macOS desktop access with administrator privileges.

    Login to the macOS desktop system and install Homebrew on your system (if not already installed)

    ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

    For more instruction visit Homebrew installation tutorial.

    Step 1 – Remove existing Node Versions

    If your system already has a node installed, uninstall it first. My system already has installed node via Homebrew. So uninstalling it first. Skip if not already installed.

    brew uninstall --ignore-dependencies node 
brew uninstall --force node

    Step 2 – Install NVM on macOS

    Now, your system is ready for the installation. Update the Homebrew package list and install NVM.

    brew update 
brew install nvm

    Next, create a directory for NVM at home.

    mkdir ~/.nvm

    Now, configure the required environment variables. Edit the following configuration file in your home directory

    vim ~/.bash_profile

    and, add the below lines to ~/.bash_profile ( or ~/.zshrc for macOS Catalina or newer versions)

    export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm
source $(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh

    Press ESC + :wq to save and close your file.

    Next, load the variable to the current shell environment. From the next login, it will automatically loaded.

    source ~/.bash_profile

    That’s it. The NVM has been installed on your macOS system. Go to next step to install Node.js versions with the help of nvm.

    Step 3 – Install Node.js with NVM

    First of all, see what Node versions are available to install. To see available versions, type:

    nvm ls-remote

    Now, you can install any version listed in above output. You can also use aliases names like node for latest version, lts for latest LTS version, etc.

    nvm install node     ## Installing Latest version 
nvm install 14       ## Installing Node.js 14.X version

    After installing you can verify what is installed with:

    nvm ls

    nvm list node.js macos

    If you have installed multiple versions on your system, you can set any version as the default version any time. To set the node 14.X as default version, simply use:

    nvm use 14

    Similarly, you can install other versions like Node 12, 15, and 18 versions and switch between them.

    Conclusion

    This tutorial explained you to how to install NVM and node.js on the macOS system.

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    45 Comments

    3. Adina on

      I just want to say you saved my life!
      This is so amazing. thank you for this wonderful exact step by step guide
      God bless you

      Reply
    8. Pablo Câmara on

      Why do you “export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm” right before the “source $(brew –prefix nvm)/nvm.sh”
      if inside the “$(brew –prefix nvm)/nvm.sh” there is already this export ?

      I have used only:
      source $(brew –prefix nvm)/nvm.sh

      and it works.

      Thanks for your post!

      Reply
    16. Guillaume Deschamps on

      Hello,

      i am working on macOS BigSur v11.5.2. I wanted to install nvm in order to work with the 10.x version of sage/root (a wordpress theme builder).

      :: source ~/.bash_profile
      is not working for me.

      i used
      :: source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh
      instead.

      Thank you for the tut 😉

      Reply
    20. Stuart on

      Homebrew installation is not supported according to nvm docs:
      https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm#installing-and-updating

      This article was a bit of a waste of time to be honest.

      I ended up with command not found: nvm
      This is because there was an empty .nvm folder in my user location.
      To fix this I installed nvm manually using:
      curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash

      So you can skip over the homebrew stuff and just do that instead!

      Reply
    22. Aykut Kılıç on

      Hello,

      Thanks for the clean explanation..
      I see a file named .zshenv. Is it possible to use this instead of zshrc?
      Regards.

      Aykut.

      Reply
    25. Florian on

      for beginners like me:

      last part of point 2 should be : source ~/.zshrc
      for any recent OS (Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey) It’s kind of mentioned at the step before that but it took me a minute 🙂

      Reply
    29. Peter Holdsworth on

      nvm documentation explicitly states that homebrew installation is not supported. I tried it but had problems invoking minor versions of node.

      Reply
    31. George on

      When zshrc is installed, you have to add
      “`export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm
      source $(brew –prefix nvm)/nvm.sh“`
      to `~/.zshrc` file.

      Reply

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