'npm install' extremely slow on Windows

Question

For me is npm install extremely slow. I'm using Windows 8.1 with the latest npm version. My connection speed is around 100Mbit/s.

The project I'm trying to install has around 20 packages/dependencies and it takes around 30 Minutes to install all dependencies ...

Does anyone have a clue?

I'm having this issue today too. Reasonably freshly built windows 8.1 box, I installed node.js and npm today. npm install is running very slow when trying to install bower. npm v2.7.4 nodejs v0.12.2 — Stuntbeaver, Apr 02 '15 at 03:01
@PantaRhei I don't know if it is the solution but it made a difference for me whether I install the modules on an USB3 drive or an internal HDD. — Simon Knittel, Aug 03 '15 at 07:19
@simon it can be your firewall blocking connection otherwise make you update Nodejs and npm — Seif Tml, Nov 14 '15 at 19:03
@Pnta you can try update Nodejs and npm and disable firewall — Seif Tml, Nov 14 '15 at 19:05
Brah.. same here. I am planning on migrating to mac. It has the best of both worlds(Unix and pro apps). — Ruhul Amin, Feb 23 '19 at 09:35
I unplugged from my networks ethernet and used wifi. This sped the installation 1,000x — aaaaaaaaaron_g, May 08 '23 at 23:43

score 44 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 21 '16 at 13:48

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I ran into the same problem, using --verbose as peterh mentioned showed me the source of the problem: I am behind a proxy, which uses its own certificates for https-connections. According to user "Mletter1" on https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/8872 the issue is quite easily solved by using http:

npm config set registry http://registry.npmjs.org/ --global

And voilà, it's fast again. Of course you should only do this, if you're ok with cleartext npm infos over the net ;-)

answered Nov 21 '16 at 13:48

Christof Kälin

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Just ran into this when using Windows WSL against a VirtualBox Docker (Toolbox). NPM slow as mud, redirecting my WSL (debian) to http npmjs.org sped things up significantly. – deepelement Feb 01 '19 at 01:29
To add another helpful link, looks like WSL NPM usage is also impacted by Windows Defender. https://gist.github.com/noelbundick/9c804a710eb76e1d6a234b14abf42a52 – deepelement Feb 01 '19 at 01:34
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But isn't that unsafe? Exposes you the MIM attacks – GiriB Oct 15 '19 at 07:27
Great answer! However, now it is required to use https: `npm config set registry https://registry.npmjs.org/ --global` – Otávio Monteagudo Sep 24 '21 at 03:48

Roko C. Buljan · Answer 2 · 2022-05-25T18:40:49.147

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Warning regarding security: this is an insecure approach if you don't use any other means of antivirus protection.

From eternity → to 5 seconds builds:

search for Windows Defender settings
→ Virus & threat protection
→ Virus & threat protection Settings
→ Exclusions

here add this two paths to your list of excluded realtime protection folders:

C:\Program Files\nodejs
C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\npm

PS: replace the <your username> with your respective User folder name; or use alias to the AppData folder like: %AppData%\npm
If you're wondering why you can't find the AppData folder in Explorer, make sure to check "View" options for "Show hidden folders".

edited May 25 '22 at 18:40

answered Aug 13 '18 at 17:04

Roko C. Buljan

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It works great for me, should also add in the workspace folder, where you have local node_modules folders for projects. – Xun Yang Aug 18 '18 at 11:42
@Chet let me know when *you make it work* what you did – Roko C. Buljan Jan 08 '19 at 21:22
I went into the defender and turned off all virus and threat protection, all network and firewall protection, turned off "check apps and files". I also turned added some npm settings to turn of progress, and set the registry url to http instead of https. Its a bit faster now. – Chet Jan 08 '19 at 22:24
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@Chet yap, viruses infections should go faster now – Roko C. Buljan Jan 09 '19 at 07:39
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That's the plan! – Chet Jan 09 '19 at 22:36
you save my day – Sh. Pavel May 21 '20 at 16:02
This is for me the best answer. – Jovylle Mar 03 '21 at 06:41
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Just type in %appdata% in your explorer. Will take you to roaming folder – Deekshith Anand Nov 15 '21 at 19:47
Why NodeJS build is considered harmful by anti-virus? – Rajesh Swarnkar Feb 03 '22 at 11:00
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If you are using nvm for windows you should change the path to "C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\nvm" – Jorge Iván Burgos Aguilar May 25 '22 at 18:24

score 13 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 12 '17 at 18:09

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I know its just a workaround, but try using the build-in "Windows PowerShell"

answered Apr 12 '17 at 18:09

MartinDoes

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Worked fine! Thanks. – IAsyncResult Sep 28 '17 at 13:37
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@MartinDoes Why is PowerShell faster? – Witold Kaczurba Nov 08 '18 at 14:27
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Same exact performance between `cmd.exe` and PowerShell for me. – Tom Granot Jul 24 '19 at 15:30
But, why, can we know why. – Jovylle Mar 03 '21 at 06:41

score 11 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 28 '15 at 15:54

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I've been facing the same issue for a while. I was trying out the following

npm i typescript live-server --save-dev

The install would get stuck at it forever. However adding the -verbose flag worked just fine.

edited Oct 28 '15 at 15:54

peterh

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answered Oct 28 '15 at 15:29

Nikhil Dev

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But why `-verbose` makes a difference? – Itamar Feb 17 '20 at 12:39

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 18 '15 at 17:15

It seems like npm do not deal well with internet connections and can sometimes end in such situation.

1) I'll advice you to check if your firewall or antivirus is not performing any scan or filtering which may slow down npm install.

2) You may also use caching from npm like below.

npm install package-name --cache "c:\path\to\use\as\dependencies\cache"

this will allow npm download and cache dependencies in the directory you specified.

3) another solution for caching npm packages dependencies is npm lazy, you may find more information about this at npm Lazy website

Note: the caching process may or may not improve the download speed but it will probably save downloads time when installing or updating your npm packages.

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 17 '15 at 15:53

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For me it appeared to be a problem with IPv6.

Disabling IPv6 helped immensely for me.
With IPv6 turned on "update-package newtonsoft.json" took 1:45 to time out with the error "update-package : A task was canceled."

With IPv6 disabled "update-package newtonsoft.json" completed in 10 seconds

answered Nov 17 '15 at 15:53

Benjamin Casha

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Disabling IPv6 helped me with similar issue on Fedora 23 – malloc4k Jan 01 '16 at 22:01

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 25 '17 at 15:51

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Turning off Windows Firewall and Windows Defender Real-time protection did it for me in Windows 10.

answered Feb 25 '17 at 15:51

Mike

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this would disable basic protection of the whole computer. [Roko's answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/51827314/588868) reduce the exposure to only node folders. – Steve B Jul 29 '21 at 14:51

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 30 '20 at 01:36

Fully turning off virus and firewall protection isn't the safest option. While it makes things faster, it leaves you more vulnerable.

In my case, I only excluded the node.exe process in virus & threat protection.

In your start menu, type "windows security" and open the app.
Click on "Virus & threat protection"
Virus & threat protection settings => Manage settings
Exclusions => Add or remove exclusions
Add an exclusion => process => type node.exe => click Add

just a simple create-react-app went down from 2m40s to 1m10s npm commands are also executed by node.exe, so the same improvements are noticed there.

score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Apr 17 '17 at 14:09

I faced the same issue while creating project while using angular cli "ng new PROJECT_NAME" this command triggers "npm -install" after creation of project, which took too long to install, and got stuck at "Installing packages for tooling via npm" . Follow these which worked for me

1) Check your npm version "npm --version" (must be higher than 2.1.8)Update your npm package by "npm -g install --save latest-version"

2) Remove the progress bar which consumes more time "npm set progress=false"

check this issues if still doesn't fix your problem https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/4150 https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/11283

Hopefully this sorts the problem Cheers!

score 2 · Answer 10 · answered Feb 18 '21 at 12:57

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In my case it was due to over 200 vulnerabilities. When I ran

npm audit fix

that solved only just a few of them. Eventually, I had to run

npm audit fix --force

and it got way better than before.

answered Feb 18 '21 at 12:57

Tiago Martins Peres

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score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Aug 09 '18 at 13:40

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I tried all the config's (proxy, registry, etc) nothing worked for me, so did a complete uninstall and install node & npm. Which helped to solve the issue.

answered Aug 09 '18 at 13:40

Prasanth Jaya

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score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Oct 27 '19 at 07:03

Turning off the Windows Defender Firewall helped for me.

Because it just doesnt feel right I first added the WIFI to a Private Network (via WIFI settings) and only turned off the Windows Defender for a Private Network instead of all public Networks.

The next step should be: what network traffic causes this and how to add this to the Windows Defender exception rule :)

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Sep 10 '21 at 17:31

in addition to all other great comments, I'd also suggest switching to yarn (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=geeklearningio.gl-vsts-tasks-yarn). using devops (selfhosted agent v.2.192.0), with node (v.14.17.6), we were able to trim total build (install + build) from ~10min to ~6-7 min.

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Aug 06 '20 at 20:45

Make sure you really are using a recent version of npm. In my case C:\Program Files\nodejs\npm.cmd had been using an old npm-cli.js below the default prefix folder %appdata%\npm rather than a newer npm-cli.js below C:\Program Files\nodejs.

Setting the environment variable npm_config_prefix to C:\Program Files\nodejs solved that. (Before finding that solution, I tried using the --prefix argument and found out the hard way doing so "forces non-global commands to run in the specified folder".)

I found a huge performance increase going from 3.10.9 to 6.13.4-- enough to make npm install times acceptable despite interference from antivirus.

score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Oct 19 '20 at 07:44

I just went through a rabbit hole trying to identify the issue. If npm install keeps getting bottlenecked you should heavily consider modifying the properties of your virtual ethernet and disable all of the offload items.

I had 0 proxies or caching issues with npm.

See here for the tutorial on how to get to the menu and disable your offload settings. Make sure you do this for both your your ethernet and VEthernet and you should immediately notice a difference. I went from a 10 minute hanging resolution that sometimes just stopped down to 10 seconds installs. https://www.dincloud.com/blog/tuning-windows-get-15x-speeds-on-large-file-copies-today

score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Oct 17 '22 at 11:09

This is highly situational but we have a local registry (npm config get registry) that was not available (VPN:d) in when I was running the npm install ... and this obviously made it very slow but it still succeeded because everything was still available through cache.

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Aug 27 '23 at 01:37

Try upgrading to the latest Node.js version. I was originally using the most recent LTS (18.x) and downloading packages was painfully slow. I then tried installing the latest 20.x and it instantly solved my download issues.

You may also try adding the --verbose flag (e.g. npm install --verbose) to have an idea on where the process is getting stuck.

'npm install' extremely slow on Windows

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