How do I downgrade node or install a specific previous version using homebrew?

Question

I'm using brew. I have node installed, using brew. I want to use an earlier version of node.

Online, I find instructions such as, for example:

cd /usr/local/Library/Formula
brew remove node --force
brew versions node
git checkout 83988e4 /usr/local/Library/Formula/node.rb
brew install node

The problem I have with this is that brew doesn't seem to have a versions subcommand:

$ brew versions node
Error: Unknown command: versions
$ brew --version
0.9.5

I'm new to brew. Do I need to enable the versions subcommand somehow? Should I use a different subcommand instead? Is there a completely different method I should try?

I'm running OS X Yosemite (10.10.1); brew 0.9.5.

Answer 1

These days if you want to install a different version of node you do it this way:

First search for your desired package:

brew search node

This might give you the follow results:

heroku/brew/heroku-node ✔
node ✔
node@10
node_exporter
nodenv
libbitcoin-node
node-build
node@12 ✔
node@14 ✔
...

And then install the desired version:

brew install node@14

Also remember that you can install more than 1 node package at the same time, but you cannot have them available at the same time. So if you have the latest/generic node package already installed you need to unlink it first:

brew unlink node

And then you can link a different version:

brew link node@14

Sometimes it might be required to link them with the --force and --overwrite options:

brew link --force --overwrite node@14

However, when new node version comes out and you’ll update to it by running brew upgrade, the link will be removed and the most recent node version will be linked instead. To remedy that you might consider adding your desired node version to PATH instead (and restart the shell):

echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/node@14/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

(replace .zshrc with .bashrc or similar, depending on which $SHELL you use)

Answer 2

Here's step by step.

To see your current node version

$ node --version

To see available node versions

$ brew search node

To unlink from current version

$ brew unlink node

Install any version e.g. 8

$ brew install node@8

To link installed version

$ brew link node@8

To see your current node version (again)

$ node --version

Answer 3

As of this PR to homebrew/versions and this PR to homebrew, the answers involving brew tap homebrew/versions or *-lts packages no longer work.

The correct answer is now:

brew install node@<version>

Where <version> is 0.10, 0.12, 4, etc. For example, to install Node.js v6 (as of this writing, the most recent LTS version):

brew install node@6

You may need to run brew update prior to these commands to ensure that these new versioned formulae are available. If you have another version of the node formula installed, you'll also need to run brew unlink node first.

Answer 4

brew versions has to be installed at some point after you install brew.

$ brew tap homebrew/boneyard

You can then use the brew versions command as the instructions assume.

Answer 5

FYI, if you previously had the old version installed and haven't run brew cleanup (which deletes old versions), you can switch with something like brew switch node 5.7.0

All installed versions of node can be listed by running brew info node or ls -l /usr/local/Cellar/node/

See the brew command cheat sheet: http://ricostacruz.com/cheatsheets/homebrew.html

Answer 6

There are a lot of answers here and other places that say to use homebrew-versions, but that gives you very limited options for which version of Node you can install.

It's much easier to use NVM and it allows you to switch between versions very easily.

homebrew install nvm

Then follow the instructions in the caveats -- mkdir ~/.nvm and add two lines to your .bash_profile and source .bash_profile

Then simply run nvm install <version> for all the versions you need. Then nvm use <version> to switch.

Answer 7

If you need it just specifically for Node, you can use nvm. It is very convenient if you work with Node a lot.

Answer 8

The preferred way in the NodeJS world is using the tool n

• Installation: npm install -g n
• Install Node 8.8.4 n 8.8.4
• List all your locally available node versions and chose one: n

It seems similar to nvm, but I had issues with nvm, and n worked out of the box.

Answer 9

You can do it without homebrew.

You can uninstall and then install the node manually.

You have to download your current running version. Here is the list.

Download the node-v{your-current-version-number}.tar.gz, extract it and then go to command line.

cd node-v{your-current-version-number}
./configure
make
sudo make install

To uninstall it sudo make uninstall

Then download the version you want to install and follow same steps above.

From this blog post

Answer 10

If you faced troubles with homebrew to install any version of node, you can just download .pkg file for OSX from https://nodejs.org/dist/[VERSION_YOU_NEED]. This is only helps me to reinstall node

Answer 11

Let's imaging that you have 0.12.* version. To install (downgrade) 0.10 version of node throw the brew in OSX, you have to:

$ sudo brew tap homebrew-versions
$ brew unlink node
$ brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-versions/master/node010.rb
$ node -v

List of all node versions is here

Answer 12

as an example to downgrade from node@14 to node@12 using homebrew is first you need to install node@12

  brew install node@12

Then unlink node@14

  brew unlink node@14

Then link node@12

  brew link node@12

Then replace the path to bin folder

  echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/node@12/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

Uninstall node@14

  brew uninstall node@14

check the node version

  node -v

Answer 13

https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/

You can go here and install the version you need.

Before installing you might want to run brew unlink node to unlink the current version.