What changed in Inquirer.js from 7 to 8

@inquirer/prompts@8.7.1

What's new

• All bundled prompts now pin @inquirer/type to an exact version in their published manifests. Since these type definitions leak into consumers' tsc runs, a semver range on the types-only dependency could break downstream TypeScript builds without any change to Inquirer.js itself (#2247, fixes #2244).

Included

• @inquirer/checkbox@^5.2.4
• @inquirer/confirm@^6.3.1
• @inquirer/editor@^5.3.2
• @inquirer/expand@^5.1.4
• @inquirer/input@^5.1.5
• @inquirer/number@^4.2.2
• @inquirer/password@^5.2.1
• @inquirer/rawlist@^5.3.4
• @inquirer/search@^4.3.2
• @inquirer/select@^5.2.4

@inquirer/prompts@8.7.0

What's new

• password gains the toggleMask option (ctrl+t to reveal the typed value).
• confirm now matches localized yes/no answers per-locale.
• Prettified prompt and theme types for better IDE display.
• Added inquirer-grouped-checkbox to the community prompts list (#2236).

Included

• @inquirer/checkbox@^5.2.3
• @inquirer/confirm@^6.3.0
• @inquirer/editor@^5.3.1
• @inquirer/expand@^5.1.3
• @inquirer/input@^5.1.4
• @inquirer/number@^4.2.1
• @inquirer/password@^5.2.0
• @inquirer/rawlist@^5.3.3
• @inquirer/search@^4.3.1
• @inquirer/select@^5.2.3

@inquirer/prompts@8.6.0

The all-in-one prompts package, re-exporting every individual prompt at its latest version.

Highlights

This release rides on @inquirer/core@12.0.0, which makes the useState setter accept a reducer/updater function. It also brings a new initialValue option to search, plus fixes for number, confirm, and editor.

What's new

• @inquirer/search — new initialValue?: string option to pre-fill the search input (#2205)

What's fixed

• @inquirer/number — avoid floating-point step errors; accept explicit undefined as default (#2166, #2182)
• @inquirer/confirm — accept explicit undefined as default (#2182)
• @inquirer/editor — accept explicit undefined as default (#2182)

Included prompts

• @inquirer/checkbox@5.2.2
• @inquirer/confirm@6.2.0
• @inquirer/editor@5.3.0
• @inquirer/expand@5.1.2
• @inquirer/input@5.1.3
• @inquirer/number@4.2.0
• @inquirer/password@5.1.2
• @inquirer/rawlist@5.3.2
• @inquirer/search@4.3.0
• @inquirer/select@5.2.2

Note: This release depends on @inquirer/core@^12.0.0, which contains a breaking change to the useState setter type (it now accepts a reducer function). See the @inquirer/core@12.0.0 release notes for details.

• Fix security warnings in external-editor

• Rolled back mute-stream dependency from v4 to v3 to undo breaking compatible engines.
• Added tooling to prevent regression of the above in the future. This surfaced our min engines already enforced a higher limit, so adjusted the explicit limits to match the current state.

• Feat: Read env variable INQUIRER_KEYBINDINGS to enable vim or emacs keybindings; making this a user preference instead of a library author preference. One caveat is doing so disable the search feature in the select prompt. Syntax: INQUIRER_KEYBINDINGS=vim,emacs.
• Fix: Line wraps would sometime cause the cursor to be mispositioned relative to the input.
• Chore: Bump dependencies.

• Fix: Windows rendering bug
• Fix: Preserve exact literal types in choices array (Typescript only)
• Fix: Allow input default value to be of type undefined (Typescript only)
• Bump dependencies

• Fix: some Windows terminals would freeze and not react to keypresses.

• Improve expand prompt type inferrence.

• Feat: Added a loading message while validating editor prompt input.
• Type improvement: Better type inference with checkbox, search and expand prompts.
• Fix: editor prompt not always properly handling editor path on windows.

• Fix broken 8.3.1 release process.

• Bump dependencies

• Fix: Keypresses happening before a prompt is rendered are now ignored.
• Fix (checkbox): Element who're both checked and disabled are now always included in the returned array.
• Feat (select/checkbox): Cursor will now hover disabled options of the list; but they still cannot be interacted with. This prevents the cursor jumping ahead in ways that can be confusing.
• Feat: various new theme options to make all prompts content localizable.

Finally, see our new @inquirer/i18n package!

• chore: Switch wrap-ansi with fast-wrap-ansi

• feat(search): Add support for default.
• feat(rawlist): Add support for description of choices. That information is displayed under the list when the choice is highlighted.
• Bump dependencies

• Feat: rawlist now supports default option.
• Fix: select now infer return type properly when passing a choices array of string literals.

• Fix Typescript not discovering types when moduleResolution is set to commonjs (you probably want to fix that in your project if it's still in your tsconfig)

Release Notes

🚨 Breaking Changes

This is a major release that modernizes the codebase for Node.js ≥ 20.

ESM Only - No More CommonJS Support

Impact: All packages are now ESM-only. CommonJS imports are no longer supported.

If you're on modern Node versions (≥ 20), this should be transparent and have no impact.

Node.js Version Requirement

Minimum Node.js version is now 20.x

Node.js versions below 20 are no longer supported. Please upgrade to Node.js 20 or later.

Node min versions: >=23.5.0 || ^22.13.0 || ^21.7.0 || ^20.12.0

Deprecated APIs Removed

The following deprecated APIs have been removed after being deprecated in previous releases:

list prompt alias removed (affects inquirer package only)

The list alias has been removed from the inquirer package. This only impacts users of the legacy inquirer package, not users of @inquirer/prompts or individual prompt packages.

// ❌ No longer available (inquirer package only)
import inquirer from 'inquirer';
const answer = await inquirer.prompt([
  { type: 'list', name: 'choice', message: 'Pick one:', choices: ['a', 'b'] }
]);

// ✅ Use 'select' instead
import inquirer from 'inquirer';
const answer = await inquirer.prompt([
  { type: 'select', name: 'choice', message: 'Pick one:', choices: ['a', 'b'] }
]);

helpMode theme property removed

// ❌ No longer available
const answer = await select({
  theme: { helpMode: 'never' }
});

// ✅ Use theme.style.keysHelpTip instead
const answer = await select({
  theme: {
    style: {
      keysHelpTip: () => undefined // or your custom styling function
    }
  }
});

This affects the following prompts:

• @inquirer/checkbox
• @inquirer/search
• @inquirer/select

instructions config property removed

// ❌ No longer available
const answer = await checkbox({
  instructions: 'Custom instructions'
});

// ✅ Use theme.style.keysHelpTip instead
const answer = await checkbox({
  theme: {
    style: {
      keysHelpTip: (text) => 'Custom instructions'
    }
  }
});

This affects the following prompts:

• @inquirer/checkbox
• @inquirer/search
• @inquirer/select

cancel() method removed

The cancel() method on prompt return custom Promise has been removed.

// ❌ No longer available
const answerPromise = input({ message: 'Name?' });
answerPromise.cancel();
const answer = await answerPromise;

// ✅ Use AbortSignal instead
const controller = new AbortController();
const answer = await input(
  { message: 'Name?' },
  { signal: controller.signal }
);
controller.abort();

Color Library Change: yoctocolors → Node.js styleText

Internal change: The project now uses Node.js built-in util.styleText() instead of the yoctocolors package for terminal colors. This makes Inquirer smaller and reduces risks of vulnerabilities coming from transitive dependencies.