Fork Colours

A brand new, not another, special and fast Node.js library to ANSI colors to terminal output.

Started as a fork of @ai's nanocolors, which is a fork of @jorgebucaran’s colorette with hacks from @lukeed’s kleur.

Key features:

• This library was inspired by many other unique libraries
• It is faster than alternatives
• It is British friendly: Tiny Colours not Colors
• It is a fork of fork
• It is one-liner program
• Total files: 7
• Package size: 4.6 kB
• Unpacked size: 14.9 kB

Also:

• It is 4 times faster than chalk for simple use cases.
• No dependencies. It takes 5 times less space in node_modules than chalk.
• Auto-detects color support. You can also toggle color mode manually.
• Tree-shakable. We use a dual [ESM]/[CJS] package.
• Supports Node.js ≥ 6 and universal Node.js/browser projects.

import { green, bold } from 'forkcolours'

console.log(
  green(`Task ${bold('1')} was finished`)
)

Inspired by

• Nanocolors by @ai
• Colorette by @jorgebucaran
• Kleur by @lukeed
• Colors.js by @Marak
• Chalk by @sindresorhus
• And many more...

Real-time Benchmarks

Simple

Run node test/simple-benchmark.js
  chalk 27,865,695 ops/sec
  cli-color 320,071 ops/sec
  ansi-colors 1,454,343 ops/sec
  kleur 69,030,393 ops/sec
  kleur/colors 61,530,806 ops/sec
  felt-pen 21,725,908 ops/sec
  colorette 18,321,149 ops/sec
  nanocolors 7,978,665 ops/sec
  forkcolours 18,935,821 ops/sec 🚀

Complex

Run node test/complex-benchmark.js
  chalk 7,265,255 ops/sec
  cli-color 216,698 ops/sec
  ansi-colors 610,524 ops/sec
  kleur 11,316,157 ops/sec
  kleur/colors 11,019,217 ops/sec
  felt-pen 7,388,171 ops/sec
  colorette 1,487,709 ops/sec
  nanocolors 1,463,641 ops/sec
  forkcolours 1,537,279 ops/sec 🚀

Loading

Run node test/loading.cjs
  chalk 8.838 ms
  cli-color 47.355 ms
  ansi-colors 4.199 ms
  kleur 5.217 ms
  kleur/colors 1.824 ms
  felt-pen 0.715 ms
  colorette 1.515 ms
  nanocolors 0.917 ms
  forkcolours 0.763 ms 🚀

Size

Run node test/size.js
  chalk 101 kB
  cli-color 1249 kB
  ansi-colors 25 kB
  kleur 21 kB
  felt-pen 10 kB
  colorette 16 kB
  nanocolors 16 kB
  forkcolours 16 kB 🚀

Colorette

  Run node test/colorette-benchmark.js
  chalk × 6,570,253 ops/sec
  kleur × 10,115,512 ops/sec
  ansi-colors × 202,788 ops/sec
  colorette × 459,384 ops/sec
  nanocolors × 435,993 ops/sec
  forkcolours × 469,867 ops/sec 🚀

Replacing chalk

1. Replace import and use named exports:

   - import chalk from 'chalk'
   + import { red, bold } from 'forkcolours'

2. Unprefix calls:

   - chalk.red(text)
   + red(text)

3. Replace chains to nested calls:

   - chalk.red.bold(text)
   + red(bold(text))

API

Individual Colors

Fork Colours exports functions:

| Colors | Background Colors | Modifiers | | --------- | ------------------- | ----------------- | | black | bgBlack | dim | | red | bgRed | bold | | green | bgGreen | hidden | | yellow | bgYellow | italic | | blue | bgBlue | underline | | magenta | bgMagenta | ~~strikethrough~~ | | cyan | bgCyan | reset | | white | bgWhite | | | gray | | |

Functions are not chainable. You need to wrap it inside each other:

import { black, bgYellow } from 'forkcolours'

console.log(bgYellow(black(' WARN ')))

Functions will use colors only if Fork Colours auto-detect that current environment supports colors.

You can get support level in isColorSupported:

import { isColorSupported } from 'forkcolours'

if (isColorSupported) {
  console.log('With colors')
}

Conditional Support

You can manually switch colors on/off and override color support auto-detection:

import { createColors } from 'forkcolours'

const { red } = createColors(options.enableColors)

On undefined argument, createColors will use value from color support auto-detection.