Colors-option NPM

Let users toggle colors.

This is a thin wrapper around the popular chalk colors library that adds support for:

A colors boolean option
The NO_COLOR and NODE_DISABLE_COLORS environment variables

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Example

import colorsOption from 'colors-option'

const exampleLibrary = ({ colors, ...otherLibraryOptions }) => {
  const chalk = colorsOption({ colors })
  console.log(chalk.red('example'))
}

Install

npm install colors-option

This package works in Node.js >=18.18.0.

This is an ES module. It must be loaded using an import or import() statement, not require(). If TypeScript is used, it must be configured to output ES modules, not CommonJS.

API

colorsOption(options?)

options: object\ Return value: Chalk instance

options

colors

Type: boolean\ Default: undefined

Whether colors should be enabled/disabled, regardless of terminal support. Colors support is automatically detected, so this is only meant to override that default behavior.

The recommended approach is to:

Add a colors boolean programmatic option and/or CLI flag
Keep its default value undefined
Forward it to colors-option

Instead of using chalk/supports-color, this relies on Node.js built-in colors detection getColorDepth() which:

Supports the NO_COLOR and NODE_DISABLE_COLORS environment variables.
Does not guess colors detection based on the presence of a --colors CLI flag. This gives finer control and flexibility over how to expose this as a CLI flag.

Please note that chalk has a similar level option. However, that option is an integer from 0 to 3 which makes it hard to toggle colors while still keeping 256 colors or Truecolor.