platformdirs for JavaScript

📂 Unified interface to get platform-specific directories

const dirs = new PlatformDirs("awesome-app", "octocat", "1.2")
console.log(dirs.userDataDir)
//=> /home/jcbhmr/.local/share/awesome-app/1.2
console.log(dirs.userConfigDir)
//=> /home/jcbhmr/.config/awesome-app/1.2

console.log(userRuntimeDir("other-app", "ferris", "4.5"))
//=> /run/user/33333/other-app/4.5
console.log(userLogDir("my-app", "gopher", "7.8"))
//=> /home/jcbhmr/.local/state/my-app/7.8/log

🚀 Works on Windows, macOS, Linux, ~~and Android~~not yet
✅ Uses platform-specific best practices
🐍 A re-implementation of Python's platformdirs package

Installation

You can install this package from the npm registry using npm, Yarn, pnpm, Bun, Deno, etc.

npm install platformdirs

Usage

import * as fs from "node:fs/promises";
import * as path from "node:path";
import * as stream from "node:stream";
import { userCacheDir } from "platformdirs";

const cacheDir = userCacheDir("awesome-app", "octocat", "1.2")
const bigCSVPath = path.join(cacheDir, "big.csv");
if (!fs.existsSync(bigCSVPath)) {
    const response = await fetch("https://example.com/big.csv");
    await response.body.pipeTo(stream.Writable.toWeb(fs.createWriteStream(bigCSVPath)));
}

📚 For more information check out the documentation

You can quickly dump all the directories for the current environment by running the included platformdirs CLI command. This is helpful for quickly determining what dirs.userConfigDir and friends return.

npx platformdirs

TODO

TODO

-- platformdirs 4.3.6 --
-- app dirs (with optional 'version')
user_data_dir: /home/me/.local/share/MyApp/1.0
user_config_dir: /home/me/.config/MyApp/1.0
user_cache_dir: /home/me/.cache/MyApp/1.0
user_state_dir: /home/me/.local/state/MyApp/1.0
user_log_dir: /home/me/.local/state/MyApp/1.0/log
user_documents_dir: /home/me/Documents
user_downloads_dir: /home/me/Downloads
user_pictures_dir: /home/me/Pictures
user_videos_dir: /home/me/Videos
user_music_dir: /home/me/Music
user_runtime_dir: /run/user/1000/MyApp/1.0
site_data_dir: /usr/local/share/MyApp/1.0
site_config_dir: /etc/xdg/MyApp/1.0
site_cache_dir: /var/cache/MyApp/1.0
site_runtime_dir: /run/MyApp/1.0

-- app dirs (without optional 'version')
user_data_dir: /home/me/.local/share/MyApp
user_config_dir: /home/me/.config/MyApp
user_cache_dir: /home/me/.cache/MyApp
user_state_dir: /home/me/.local/state/MyApp
user_log_dir: /home/me/.local/state/MyApp/log
user_documents_dir: /home/me/Documents
user_downloads_dir: /home/me/Downloads
user_pictures_dir: /home/me/Pictures
user_videos_dir: /home/me/Videos
user_music_dir: /home/me/Music
user_runtime_dir: /run/user/1000/MyApp
site_data_dir: /usr/local/share/MyApp
site_config_dir: /etc/xdg/MyApp
site_cache_dir: /var/cache/MyApp
site_runtime_dir: /run/MyApp

-- app dirs (without optional 'appauthor')
user_data_dir: /home/me/.local/share/MyApp
user_config_dir: /home/me/.config/MyApp
user_cache_dir: /home/me/.cache/MyApp
user_state_dir: /home/me/.local/state/MyApp
user_log_dir: /home/me/.local/state/MyApp/log
user_documents_dir: /home/me/Documents
user_downloads_dir: /home/me/Downloads
user_pictures_dir: /home/me/Pictures
user_videos_dir: /home/me/Videos
user_music_dir: /home/me/Music
user_runtime_dir: /run/user/1000/MyApp
site_data_dir: /usr/local/share/MyApp
site_config_dir: /etc/xdg/MyApp
site_cache_dir: /var/cache/MyApp
site_runtime_dir: /run/MyApp

-- app dirs (with disabled 'appauthor')
user_data_dir: /home/me/.local/share/MyApp
user_config_dir: /home/me/.config/MyApp
user_cache_dir: /home/me/.cache/MyApp
user_state_dir: /home/me/.local/state/MyApp
user_log_dir: /home/me/.local/state/MyApp/log
user_documents_dir: /home/me/Documents
user_downloads_dir: /home/me/Downloads
user_pictures_dir: /home/me/Pictures
user_videos_dir: /home/me/Videos
user_music_dir: /home/me/Music
user_runtime_dir: /run/user/1000/MyApp
site_data_dir: /usr/local/share/MyApp
site_config_dir: /etc/xdg/MyApp
site_cache_dir: /var/cache/MyApp
site_runtime_dir: /run/MyApp

Development

This project uses Node.js, TypeScript, and npm. Why Node.js instead of Deno & JSR? Because it's not as popular (yet). I'd love to use Deno & JSR but nobody knows what they are. This project does use Biome instead of the usual Prettier & ESLint combo. Why? Because ESLint bungled their v9 release and Biome offers a more cohesive linter & formatter solution.