winston-pretty-format

A clean, human-friendly console formatter for Winston 3+, designed for modern Node.js projects.

Supports colorized output, structured metadata, stack trace folding, and consistent box-style layout.

If you find this package useful for your projects, please consider supporting me by Patreon, KO-FI or Paypal. It's a great way to help me maintain and improve this tool in the future. Your support is truly appreciated!

✨ Features

✅ Elegant, compact output layout (inspired by professional CLI tools)
✅ ANSI color support with automatic reset — no bleed
✅ Shows error stacks and structured meta in a readable tree format
✅ Configurable options for timestamps, metadata, and color
✅ Fully written in TypeScript, zero dependencies beyond Winston & colors
✅ Safe and fast — no mutation, no unhandled edge cases

📦 Installation

npm install winston-pretty-format
# or
pnpm add winston-pretty-format
# or
yarn add winston-pretty-format

🚀 Usage

Basic example

import winston from 'winston';
import { prettyFormat } from 'winston-pretty-format';

const logger = winston.createLogger({
    level: 'debug',
    format: winston.format.combine(
        winston.format.timestamp({ format: 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss' }),
        winston.format.colorize({ all: true }),
        padLevels(),
        prettyFormat({
            showMeta: true,
            showTimestamp: true,
            showColor: true,
            metaStrip: ['timestamp'],
            inspectOptions: {
                colors: true,
                depth: 9,
                maxArrayLength: 30_000,
                breakLength: 120,
                compact
            }
        })
    ),
    transports: [new winston.transports.Console()]
});

logger.silly('🧠 Silly mode activated — testing deep internals...');
logger.debug('🔍 Debugging login flow — validating token cache...');
logger.verbose('🗒️ Verbose trace — response headers captured for inspection.');
logger.info('✨ Application started successfully. Ready for incoming requests.');
logger.warn('⚠️ High memory usage detected (512MB / 1024MB). Consider optimizing.', {
    requestId: '8a92f1',
    userId: 'U1029',
    ip: '10.12.0.21'
});
logger.error('🔥 Failed to connect to database after 3 retries.', {
    StatusCode: '-1',
    StatusMessage: 'Connection timed out after 5s'
});
throw new Error('❌ Null payload received from auth microservice.');

Output example:

2025-10-17 17:22:13 silly   ▪ 🧠 Silly mode activated — testing deep internals...
2025-10-17 17:22:13 debug   ▪ 🔍 Debugging login flow — validating token cache...
2025-10-17 17:22:13 verbose ▪ 🗒️ Verbose trace — response headers captured for inspection.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 info    ▪ ✨ Application started successfully. Ready for incoming requests.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn    ┏ ⚠️ High memory usage detected (512MB / 1024MB). Consider optimizing.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn    ┃ [1] {
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn    ┃ [2]   requestId: '8a92f1',
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn    ┃ [3]   userId: 'U1029',
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn    ┃ [4]   ip: '10.12.0.21'
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn    ┗ [5] }
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┏ 🔥 Failed to connect to database after 3 retries.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [1] {
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [2]   StatusCode: '-1',
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [3]   StatusMessage: 'Connection timed out after 5s'
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┗ [4] }
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┏ ❌ Null payload received from auth microservice.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [ 1] Error: Null payload received from auth microservice.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [ 2]     at main (/opt/services/app-auth/src/index.ts:32:11)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [ 3]     at CronJob.<anonymous> (/opt/services/app-auth/src/index.ts:101:19)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [ 4]     at CronJob.<anonymous> (/app/node_modules/cron/dist/job.js:126:45)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [ 5]     at Generator.next (<anonymous>)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [ 6]     at /app/node_modules/cron/dist/job.js:8:71
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [ 7]     at new Promise (<anonymous>)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [ 8]     at __awaiter (/app/node_modules/cron/dist/job.js:4:12)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [ 9]     at CronJob.fireOnTick (/app/node_modules/cron/dist/job.js:120:16)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [10]     at new CronJob (/app/node_modules/cron/dist/job.js:65:23)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [11]     at <anonymous> (/opt/services/app-auth/src/index.ts:85:13)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [12]     at ModuleJob.run (node:internal/modules/esm/module_job:345:25)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┃ [13]     at async onImport.tracePromise.__proto__ (node:internal/modules/esm/loader:665:26)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error   ┗ [14]     at async asyncRunEntryPointWithESMLoader (node:internal/modules/run_main:117:5)

⚙️ Options

| Option | Type | Default | Description | | ---------------- | ---------------------- | -------------------------------- | --------------------------------- | | showTimestamp | boolean | true | Show timestamp before message | | showMeta | boolean | true | Include stack trace & metadata | | showColor | boolean | true | Enable ANSI colors | | metaStrip | (string \| symbol)[] | internal defaults | Remove extra fields from metadata | | inspectOptions | InspectOptions | { depth: 4, breakLength: 100 } | Pass to Node.js util.inspect |

🧠 Advanced Examples

Monochrome mode (no color)

import winston from 'winston';
import { prettyFormat } from 'winston-pretty-format';

const logger = winston.createLogger({
    level: 'debug',
    format: winston.format.combine(
        winston.format.timestamp({ format: 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss' }),
        winston.format.uncolorize(),
        padLevels(),
        prettyFormat({
            showColor: false,
            metaStrip: ['timestamp'],
            inspectOptions: {
                colors: false
            }
        })
    ),
    transports: [new winston.transports.Console()]
});

JSON-like meta formatting

logger.info('User logged in', {
    userId: 42,
    role: 'admin',
    ip: '192.168.0.5'
});

❤️ Acknowledgements

Inspired by:

• winston
• logform
• winston-console-format

📣 Feedback

If you discover a bug, or have a suggestion for a feature request, please submit an issue.

📚 License

This extension is licensed under the MIT License