Terser

A JavaScript mangler/compressor toolkit for ES6+.

note: You can support this project on patreon: [link] The Terser Patreon is shutting down in favor of opencollective. Check out PATRONS.md for our first-tier patrons.

Terser recommends you use RollupJS to bundle your modules, as that produces smaller code overall.

Beautification has been undocumented and is being removed from terser, we recommend you use prettier.

Find the changelog in CHANGELOG.md

Why choose terser?

uglify-es is no longer maintained and uglify-js does not support ES6+.

terser is a fork of uglify-es that mostly retains API and CLI compatibility with uglify-es and uglify-js@3.

Install

First make sure you have installed the latest version of node.js (You may need to restart your computer after this step).

From NPM for use as a command line app:

npm install terser -g

From NPM for programmatic use:

npm install terser

Command line usage

terser [input files] [options]

Terser can take multiple input files. It's recommended that you pass the input files first, then pass the options. Terser will parse input files in sequence and apply any compression options. The files are parsed in the same global scope, that is, a reference from a file to some variable/function declared in another file will be matched properly.

Command line arguments that take options (like --parse, --compress, --mangle and --format) can take in a comma-separated list of default option overrides. For instance:

terser input.js --compress ecma=2015,computed_props=false

If no input file is specified, Terser will read from STDIN.

If you wish to pass your options before the input files, separate the two with a double dash to prevent input files being used as option arguments:

terser --compress --mangle -- input.js

Command line options

    -h, --help                  Print usage information.
                                `--help options` for details on available options.
    -V, --version               Print version number.
    -p, --parse <options>       Specify parser options:
                                `acorn`  Use Acorn for parsing.
                                `bare_returns`  Allow return outside of functions.
                                                Useful when minifying CommonJS
                                                modules and Userscripts that may
                                                be anonymous function wrapped (IIFE)
                                                by the .user.js engine `caller`.
                                `expression`  Parse a single expression, rather than
                                              a program (for parsing JSON).
                                `spidermonkey`  Assume input files are SpiderMonkey
                                                AST format (as JSON).
    -c, --compress [options]    Enable compressor/specify compressor options:
                                `pure_funcs`  List of functions that can be safely
                                              removed when their return values are
                                              not used.
    -m, --mangle [options]      Mangle names/specify mangler options:
                                `reserved`  List of names that should not be mangled.
    --mangle-props [options]    Mangle properties/specify mangler options:
                                `builtins`  Mangle property names that overlaps
                                            with standard JavaScript globals and DOM
                                            API props.
                                `debug`  Add debug prefix and suffix.
                                `keep_quoted`  Only mangle unquoted properties, quoted
                                               properties are automatically reserved.
                                               `strict` disables quoted properties
                                               being automatically reserved.
                                `regex`  Only mangle matched property names.
                                `reserved`  List of names that should not be mangled.
    -f, --format [options]      Specify format options.
                                `preamble`  Preamble to prepend to the output. You
                                            can use this to insert a comment, for
                                            example for licensing information.
                                            This will not be parsed, but the source
                                            map will adjust for its presence.
                                `quote_style`  Quote style:
                                               0 - auto
                                               1 - single
                                               2 - double
                                               3 - original
                                `wrap_iife`  Wrap IIFEs in parenthesis. Note: you may
                                             want to disable `negate_iife` under
                                             compressor options.
                                `wrap_func_args`  Wrap function arguments in parenthesis.
    -o, --output <file>         Output file path (default STDOUT). Specify `ast` or
                                `spidermonkey` to write Terser or SpiderMonkey AST
                                as JSON to STDOUT respectively.
    --comments [filter]         Preserve copyright comments in the output. By
                                default this works like Google Closure, keeping
                                JSDoc-style comments that contain e.g. "@license",
                                or start with "!". You can optionally pass one of the
                                following arguments to this flag:
                                - "all" to keep all comments
                                - `false` to omit comments in the output
                                - a valid JS RegExp like `/foo/` or `/^!/` to
                                keep only matching comments.
                                Note that currently not *all* comments can be
                                kept when compression is on, because of dead
                                code removal or cascading statements into
                                sequences.
    --config-file <file>        Read `minify()` options from JSON file.
    -d, --define <expr>[=value] Global definitions.
    --ecma <version>            Specify ECMAScript release: 5, 2015, 2016, etc.
    -e, --enclose [arg[:value]] Embed output in a big function with configurable
                                arguments and values.
    --ie8                       Support non-standard Internet Explorer 8.
                                Equivalent to setting `ie8: true` in `minify()`
                                for `compress`, `mangle` and `format` options.
                                By default Terser will not try to be IE-proof.
    --keep-classnames           Do not mangle/drop class names.
    --keep-fnames               Do not mangle/drop function names.  Useful for
                                code relying on Function.prototype.name.
    --module                    Input is an ES6 module. If `compress` or `mangle` is
                                enabled then the `toplevel` option will be enabled.
    --name-cache <file>         File to hold mangled name mappings.
    --safari10                  Support non-standard Safari 10/11.
                                Equivalent to setting `safari10: true` in `minify()`
                                for `mangle` and `format` options.
                                By default `terser` will not work around
                                Safari 10/11 bugs.
    --source-map [options]      Enable source map/specify source map options:
                                `base`  Path to compute relative paths from input files.
                                `content`  Input source map, useful if you're compressing
                                           JS that was generated from some other original
                                           code. Specify "inline" if the source map is
                                           included within the sources.
                                `filename`  Name and/or location of the output source.
                                `includeSources`  Pass this flag if you want to include
                                                  the content of source files in the
                                                  source map as sourcesContent property.
                                `root`  Path to the original source to be included in
                                        the source map.
                                `url`  If specified, path to the source map to append in
                                       `//# sourceMappingURL`.
    --timings                   Display operations run time on STDERR.
    --toplevel                  Compress and/or mangle variables in top level scope.
    --wrap <name>               Embed everything in a big function, making the
                                “exports” and “global” variables available. You
                                need to pass an argument to this option to
                                specify the name that your module will take
                                when included in, say, a browser.

Specify --output (-o) to declare the output file. Otherwise the output goes to STDOUT.

CLI source map options

Terser can generate a source map file, which is highly useful for debugging your compressed JavaScript. To get a source map, pass --source-map --output output.js (source map will be written out to output.js.map).

Additional options:

For example:

terser js/file1.js js/file2.js \
         -o foo.min.js -c -m \
         --source-map "root='http://foo.com/src',url='foo.min.js.map'"

The above will compress and mangle file1.js and file2.js, will drop the output in foo.min.js and the source map in foo.min.js.map. The source mapping will refer to http://foo.com/src/js/file1.js and http://foo.com/src/js/file2.js (in fact it will list http://foo.com/src as the source map root, and the original files as js/file1.js and js/file2.js).

Composed source map

When you're compressing JS code that was output by a compiler such as CoffeeScript, mapping to the JS code won't be too helpful. Instead, you'd like to map back to the original code (i.e. CoffeeScript). Terser has an option to take an input source map. Assuming you have a mapping from CoffeeScript → compiled JS, Terser can generate a map from CoffeeScript → compressed JS by mapping every token in the compiled JS to its original location.

To use this feature pass --source-map "content='/path/to/input/source.map'" or --source-map "content=inline" if the source map is included inline with the sources.

CLI compress options

You need to pass --compress (-c) to enable the compressor. Optionally you can pass a comma-separated list of compress options.

Options are in the form foo=bar, or just foo (the latter implies a boolean option that you want to set true; it's effectively a shortcut for foo=true).

Example:

terser file.js -c toplevel,sequences=false

CLI mangle options

To enable the mangler you need to pass --mangle (-m). The following (comma-separated) options are supported:

When mangling is enabled but you want to prevent certain names from being mangled, you can declare those names with --mangle reserved — pass a comma-separated list of names. For example:

terser ... -m reserved=['$','require','exports']

to prevent the require, exports and $ names from being changed.

CLI mangling property names (--mangle-props)

Note: THIS WILL BREAK YOUR CODE. A good rule of thumb is not to use this unless you know exactly what you're doing and how this works and read this section until the end.

Mangling property names is a separate step, different from variable name mangling. Pass --mangle-props to enable it. The least dangerous way to use this is to use the regex option like so:

terser example.js -c -m --mangle-props regex=/_$/

This will mangle all properties that end with an underscore. So you can use it to mangle internal methods.

By default, it will mangle all properties in the input code with the exception of built in DOM properties and properties in core JavaScript classes, which is what will break your code if you don't:

  1. Control all the code you're mangling
  2. Avoid using a module bundler, as they usually will call Terser on each file individually, making it impossible to pass mangled objects between modules.
  3. Avoid calling functions like defineProperty or hasOwnProperty, because they refer to object properties using strings and will break your code if you don't know what you are doing.

An example:

// example.js
var x = {
    baz_: 0,
    foo_: 1,
    calc: function() {
        return this.foo_ + this.baz_;
    }
};
x.bar_ = 2;
x["baz_"] = 3;
console.log(x.calc());

Mangle all properties (except for JavaScript builtins) (very unsafe):

$ terser example.js -c passes=2 -m --mangle-props

var x={o:3,t:1,i:function(){return this.t+this.o},s:2};console.log(x.i());

Mangle all properties except for reserved properties (still very unsafe):

$ terser example.js -c passes=2 -m --mangle-props reserved=[foo_,bar_]

var x={o:3,foo_:1,t:function(){return this.foo_+this.o},bar_:2};console.log(x.t());

Mangle all properties matching a regex (not as unsafe but still unsafe):

$ terser example.js -c passes=2 -m --mangle-props regex=/_$/

var x={o:3,t:1,calc:function(){return this.t+this.o},i:2};console.log(x.calc());

Combining mangle properties options:

$ terser example.js -c passes=2 -m --mangle-props regex=/_$/,reserved=[bar_]

var x={o:3,t:1,calc:function(){return this.t+this.o},bar_:2};console.log(x.calc());

In order for this to be of any use, we avoid mangling standard JS names and DOM API properties by default (--mangle-props builtins to override).

A regular expression can be used to define which property names should be mangled. For example, --mangle-props regex=/^_/ will only mangle property names that start with an underscore.

When you compress multiple files using this option, in order for them to work together in the end we need to ensure somehow that one property gets mangled to the same name in all of them. For this, pass --name-cache filename.json and Terser will maintain these mappings in a file which can then be reused. It should be initially empty. Example:

$ rm -f /tmp/cache.json  # start fresh
$ terser file1.js file2.js --mangle-props --name-cache /tmp/cache.json -o part1.js
$ terser file3.js file4.js --mangle-props --name-cache /tmp/cache.json -o part2.js

Now, part1.js and part2.js will be consistent with each other in terms of mangled property names.

Using the name cache is not necessary if you compress all your files in a single call to Terser.

Mangling unquoted names (--mangle-props keep_quoted)

Using quoted property name (o["foo"]) reserves the property name (foo) so that it is not mangled throughout the entire script even when used in an unquoted style (o.foo). Example:

// stuff.js
var o = {
    "foo": 1,
    bar: 3
};
o.foo += o.bar;
console.log(o.foo);

$ terser stuff.js --mangle-props keep_quoted -c -m

var o={foo:1,o:3};o.foo+=o.o,console.log(o.foo);

Debugging property name mangling

You can also pass --mangle-props debug in order to mangle property names without completely obscuring them. For example the property o.foo would mangle to o._$foo$_ with this option. This allows property mangling of a large codebase while still being able to debug the code and identify where mangling is breaking things.

$ terser stuff.js --mangle-props debug -c -m

var o={_$foo$_:1,_$bar$_:3};o._$foo$_+=o._$bar$_,console.log(o._$foo$_);

You can also pass a custom suffix using --mangle-props debug=XYZ. This would then mangle o.foo to o._$foo$XYZ_. You can change this each time you compile a script to identify how a property got mangled. One technique is to pass a random number on every compile to simulate mangling changing with different inputs (e.g. as you update the input script with new properties), and to help identify mistakes like writing mangled keys to storage.

API Reference

Assuming installation via NPM, you can load Terser in your application like this:

const { minify } = require("terser");

Or,

import { minify } from "terser";

Browser loading is also supported:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/source-map@0.7.3/dist/source-map.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/terser/dist/bundle.min.js"></script>

There is a single async high level function, async minify(code, options), which will perform all minification phases in a configurable manner. By default minify() will enable compress and mangle. Example:

var code = "function add(first, second) { return first + second; }";
var result = await minify(code, { sourceMap: true });
console.log(result.code);  // minified output: function add(n,d){return n+d}
console.log(result.map);  // source map

You can minify more than one JavaScript file at a time by using an object for the first argument where the keys are file names and the values are source code:

var code = {
    "file1.js": "function add(first, second) { return first + second; }",
    "file2.js": "console.log(add(1 + 2, 3 + 4));"
};
var result = await minify(code);
console.log(result.code);
// function add(d,n){return d+n}console.log(add(3,7));

The toplevel option:

var code = {
    "file1.js": "function add(first, second) { return first + second; }",
    "file2.js": "console.log(add(1 + 2, 3 + 4));"
};
var options = { toplevel: true };
var result = await minify(code, options);
console.log(result.code);
// console.log(3+7);

The nameCache option:

var options = {
    mangle: {
        toplevel: true,
    },
    nameCache: {}
};
var result1 = await minify({
    "file1.js": "function add(first, second) { return first + second; }"
}, options);
var result2 = await minify({
    "file2.js": "console.log(add(1 + 2, 3 + 4));"
}, options);
console.log(result1.code);
// function n(n,r){return n+r}
console.log(result2.code);
// console.log(n(3,7));

You may persist the name cache to the file system in the following way:

var cacheFileName = "/tmp/cache.json";
var options = {
    mangle: {
        properties: true,
    },
    nameCache: JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync(cacheFileName, "utf8"))
};
fs.writeFileSync("part1.js", await minify({
    "file1.js": fs.readFileSync("file1.js", "utf8"),
    "file2.js": fs.readFileSync("file2.js", "utf8")
}, options).code, "utf8");
fs.writeFileSync("part2.js", await minify({
    "file3.js": fs.readFileSync("file3.js", "utf8"),
    "file4.js": fs.readFileSync("file4.js", "utf8")
}, options).code, "utf8");
fs.writeFileSync(cacheFileName, JSON.stringify(options.nameCache), "utf8");

An example of a combination of minify() options:

var code = {
    "file1.js": "function add(first, second) { return first + second; }",
    "file2.js": "console.log(add(1 + 2, 3 + 4));"
};
var options = {
    toplevel: true,
    compress: {
        global_defs: {
            "@console.log": "alert"
        },
        passes: 2
    },
    format: {
        preamble: "/* minified */"
    }
};
var result = await minify(code, options);
console.log(result.code);
// /* minified */
// alert(10);"

An error example:

try {
    const result = await minify({"foo.js" : "if (0) else console.log(1);"});
    // Do something with result
} catch (error) {
    const { message, filename, line, col, pos } = error;
    // Do something with error
}

Minify options

Minify options structure

{
    parse: {
        // parse options
    },
    compress: {
        // compress options
    },
    mangle: {
        // mangle options

        properties: {
            // mangle property options
        }
    },
    format: {
        // format options (can also use `output` for backwards compatibility)
    },
    sourceMap: {
        // source map options
    },
    ecma: 5, // specify one of: 5, 2015, 2016, etc.
    enclose: false, // or specify true, or "args:values"
    keep_classnames: false,
    keep_fnames: false,
    ie8: false,
    module: false,
    nameCache: null, // or specify a name cache object
    safari10: false,
    toplevel: false
}

Source map options

To generate a source map:

var result = await minify({"file1.js": "var a = function() {};"}, {
    sourceMap: {
        filename: "out.js",
        url: "out.js.map"
    }
});
console.log(result.code); // minified output
console.log(result.map);  // source map

Note that the source map is not saved in a file, it's just returned in result.map. The value passed for sourceMap.url is only used to set //# sourceMappingURL=out.js.map in result.code. The value of filename is only used to set file attribute (see the spec) in source map file.

You can set option sourceMap.url to be "inline" and source map will be appended to code.

You can also specify sourceRoot property to be included in source map:

var result = await minify({"file1.js": "var a = function() {};"}, {
    sourceMap: {
        root: "http://example.com/src",
        url: "out.js.map"
    }
});

If you're compressing compiled JavaScript and have a source map for it, you can use sourceMap.content:

var result = await minify({"compiled.js": "compiled code"}, {
    sourceMap: {
        content: "content from compiled.js.map",
        url: "minified.js.map"
    }
});
// same as before, it returns `code` and `map`

If you're using the X-SourceMap header instead, you can just omit sourceMap.url.

If you happen to need the source map as a raw object, set sourceMap.asObject to true.

Parse options

Compress options

Mangle options

Examples:

// test.js
var globalVar;
function funcName(firstLongName, anotherLongName) {
    var myVariable = firstLongName +  anotherLongName;
}

var code = fs.readFileSync("test.js", "utf8");

await minify(code).code;
// 'function funcName(a,n){}var globalVar;'

await minify(code, { mangle: { reserved: ['firstLongName'] } }).code;
// 'function funcName(firstLongName,a){}var globalVar;'

await minify(code, { mangle: { toplevel: true } }).code;
// 'function n(n,a){}var a;'

Mangle properties options

Format options

These options control the format of Terser's output code. Previously known as "output options".

Miscellaneous

Keeping copyright notices or other comments

You can pass --comments to retain certain comments in the output. By default it will keep comments starting with "!" and JSDoc-style comments that contain "@preserve", "@copyright", "@license" or "@cc_on" (conditional compilation for IE). You can pass --comments all to keep all the comments, or a valid JavaScript regexp to keep only comments that match this regexp. For example --comments /^!/ will keep comments like /*! Copyright Notice */.

Note, however, that there might be situations where comments are lost. For example:

function f() {
    /** @preserve Foo Bar */
    function g() {
        // this function is never called
    }
    return something();
}

Even though it has "@preserve", the comment will be lost because the inner function g (which is the AST node to which the comment is attached to) is discarded by the compressor as not referenced.

The safest comments where to place copyright information (or other info that needs to be kept in the output) are comments attached to toplevel nodes.

The unsafe compress option

It enables some transformations that might break code logic in certain contrived cases, but should be fine for most code. It assumes that standard built-in ECMAScript functions and classes have not been altered or replaced. You might want to try it on your own code; it should reduce the minified size. Some examples of the optimizations made when this option is enabled:

Conditional compilation

You can use the --define (-d) switch in order to declare global variables that Terser will assume to be constants (unless defined in scope). For example if you pass --define DEBUG=false then, coupled with dead code removal Terser will discard the following from the output:

if (DEBUG) {
    console.log("debug stuff");
}

You can specify nested constants in the form of --define env.DEBUG=false.

Another way of doing that is to declare your globals as constants in a separate file and include it into the build. For example you can have a build/defines.js file with the following:

var DEBUG = false;
var PRODUCTION = true;
// etc.

and build your code like this:

terser build/defines.js js/foo.js js/bar.js... -c

Terser will notice the constants and, since they cannot be altered, it will evaluate references to them to the value itself and drop unreachable code as usual. The build will contain the const declarations if you use them. If you are targeting < ES6 environments which does not support const, using var with reduce_vars (enabled by default) should suffice.

Conditional compilation API

You can also use conditional compilation via the programmatic API. With the difference that the property name is global_defs and is a compressor property:

var result = await minify(fs.readFileSync("input.js", "utf8"), {
    compress: {
        dead_code: true,
        global_defs: {
            DEBUG: false
        }
    }
});

To replace an identifier with an arbitrary non-constant expression it is necessary to prefix the global_defs key with "@" to instruct Terser to parse the value as an expression:

await minify("alert('hello');", {
    compress: {
        global_defs: {
            "@alert": "console.log"
        }
    }
}).code;
// returns: 'console.log("hello");'

Otherwise it would be replaced as string literal:

await minify("alert('hello');", {
    compress: {
        global_defs: {
            "alert": "console.log"
        }
    }
}).code;
// returns: '"console.log"("hello");'

Annotations

Annotations in Terser are a way to tell it to treat a certain function call differently. The following annotations are available:

You can use either a @ sign at the start, or a #.

Here are some examples on how to use them:

/*@__INLINE__*/
function_always_inlined_here()

/*#__NOINLINE__*/
function_cant_be_inlined_into_here()

const x = /*#__PURE__*/i_am_dropped_if_x_is_not_used()

ESTree / SpiderMonkey AST

Terser has its own abstract syntax tree format; for practical reasons we can't easily change to using the SpiderMonkey AST internally. However, Terser now has a converter which can import a SpiderMonkey AST.

For example Acorn is a super-fast parser that produces a SpiderMonkey AST. It has a small CLI utility that parses one file and dumps the AST in JSON on the standard output. To use Terser to mangle and compress that:

acorn file.js | terser -p spidermonkey -m -c

The -p spidermonkey option tells Terser that all input files are not JavaScript, but JS code described in SpiderMonkey AST in JSON. Therefore we don't use our own parser in this case, but just transform that AST into our internal AST.

spidermonkey is also available in minify as parse and format options to accept and/or produce a spidermonkey AST.

Use Acorn for parsing

More for fun, I added the -p acorn option which will use Acorn to do all the parsing. If you pass this option, Terser will require("acorn").

Acorn is really fast (e.g. 250ms instead of 380ms on some 650K code), but converting the SpiderMonkey tree that Acorn produces takes another 150ms so in total it's a bit more than just using Terser's own parser.

Terser Fast Minify Mode

It's not well known, but whitespace removal and symbol mangling accounts for 95% of the size reduction in minified code for most JavaScript - not elaborate code transforms. One can simply disable compress to speed up Terser builds by 3 to 4 times.

| d3.js | size | gzip size | time (s) | | --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | | original | 451,131 | 108,733 | - | | terser@3.7.5 mangle=false, compress=false | 316,600 | 85,245 | 0.82 | | terser@3.7.5 mangle=true, compress=false | 220,216 | 72,730 | 1.45 | | terser@3.7.5 mangle=true, compress=true | 212,046 | 70,954 | 5.87 | | babili@0.1.4 | 210,713 | 72,140 | 12.64 | | babel-minify@0.4.3 | 210,321 | 72,242 | 48.67 | | babel-minify@0.5.0-alpha.01eac1c3 | 210,421 | 72,238 | 14.17 |

To enable fast minify mode from the CLI use:

terser file.js -m

To enable fast minify mode with the API use:

await minify(code, { compress: false, mangle: true });

Source maps and debugging

Various compress transforms that simplify, rearrange, inline and remove code are known to have an adverse effect on debugging with source maps. This is expected as code is optimized and mappings are often simply not possible as some code no longer exists. For highest fidelity in source map debugging disable the compress option and just use mangle.

Compiler assumptions

To allow for better optimizations, the compiler makes various assumptions:

Build Tools and Adaptors using Terser

https://www.npmjs.com/browse/depended/terser

Replacing uglify-es with terser in a project using yarn

A number of JS bundlers and uglify wrappers are still using buggy versions of uglify-es and have not yet upgraded to terser. If you are using yarn you can add the following alias to your project's package.json file:

  "resolutions": {
    "uglify-es": "npm:terser"
  }

to use terser instead of uglify-es in all deeply nested dependencies without changing any code.

Note: for this change to take effect you must run the following commands to remove the existing yarn lock file and reinstall all packages:

$ rm -rf node_modules yarn.lock
$ yarn

Reporting issues

In the terser CLI we use source-map-support to produce good error stacks. In your own app, you're expected to enable source-map-support (read their docs) to have nice stack traces that will help you write good issues.

Obtaining the source code given to Terser

Because users often don't control the call to await minify() or its arguments, Terser provides a TERSER_DEBUG_DIR environment variable to make terser output some debug logs. If you're using a bundler or a project that includes a bundler and are not sure what went wrong with your code, pass that variable like so:

$ TERSER_DEBUG_DIR=/path/to/logs command-that-uses-terser
$ ls /path/to/logs
terser-debug-123456.log

If you're not sure how to set an environment variable on your shell (the above example works in bash), you can try using cross-env:

> npx cross-env TERSER_DEBUG_DIR=/path/to/logs command-that-uses-terser

README.md Patrons:

note: You can support this project on patreon: [link] The Terser Patreon is shutting down in favor of opencollective. Check out PATRONS.md for our first-tier patrons.

These are the second-tier patrons. Great thanks for your support!

Contributors

Code Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute. [Contribute]. https://github.com/terser/terser/graphs/contributors

Financial Contributors

Become a financial contributor and help us sustain our community. [Contribute]

Individuals

https://opencollective.com/terser

Organizations

Support this project with your organization. [Contribute]