Using Node Watch Instead of Nodemon

Nodemon has been the go-to tool for years for running a live-reloading Node.js server, but you may not need it anymore! You can now use the new --watch flag in Node instead.

How To Use

To use this feature you’ll need to pass the --watch flag to your command followed by the name of the file. If you wanted to run a file named server.js, for example, you would run the following:

node --watch server.js

This command will auto-reload your file, but only when that specifc file has changed. Let’s say you want to reload your file anytime any file in a given directory changes. For this, you can use the --watch-path flag followed by the directory and then the file you want to run. If you’re file is inside of a directory called src, you can use the following command:

node --watch-path=./src server.js

Availability

This feature is available under a feature flag in Node 18.11+ and generally available in Node 19.