Install npm packages globally without sudo on macOS and Linux

npm installs packages locally within your projects by default. You can also install packages globally (e.g. npm install -g <package>) (useful for command-line apps). However the downside of this is that you need to be root (or use sudo) to be able to install globally.

Here is a way to install packages globally for a given user.

1. Create a directory for global packages

mkdir "${HOME}/.npm-packages"

2. Tell npm where to store globally installed packages

npm config set prefix "${HOME}/.npm-packages"

3. Ensure npm will find installed binaries and man pages

Add the following to your .bashrc/.zshrc:

NPM_PACKAGES="${HOME}/.npm-packages"

export PATH="$PATH:$NPM_PACKAGES/bin"

# Preserve MANPATH if you already defined it somewhere in your config.
# Otherwise, fall back to `manpath` so we can inherit from `/etc/manpath`.
export MANPATH="${MANPATH-$(manpath)}:$NPM_PACKAGES/share/man"

If you're using fish, add the following to ~/.config/fish/config.fish:

set NPM_PACKAGES "$HOME/.npm-packages"

set PATH $PATH $NPM_PACKAGES/bin

set MANPATH $NPM_PACKAGES/share/man $MANPATH  

If you have erased your MANPATH by mistake, you can restore it by running set -Ux MANPATH (manpath -g) $MANPATH once. Do not put this command in your config.fish.

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Check out npm-g_nosudo for doing the above steps automagically

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NOTE: If you are running macOS, the .bashrc file may not yet exist, and the terminal will be obtaining its environment parameters from another file, such as .profile or .bash_profile. These files also reside in the user's home folder. In this case, simply adding the following line to them will instruct Terminal to also load the .bashrc file:

source ~/.bashrc

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See also: npm's documentation on "Fixing npm permissions".