We're excited to announce the release of Node.js 22! Highlights include require()ing ES modules, a WebSocket client, updates of the V8 JavaScript engine, and more!

Node.js 22 will enter long-term support (LTS) in October, but until then, it will be the "Current" release for the next six months. We encourage you to explore the new features and benefits offered by this latest release and evaluate their potential impact on your applications.

The project continues to make progress across a number of areas, with many new features and fixes flowing into existing LTS releases. For that reason, the changes outlined in the changelog for Node.js 22 only represent a small subset of the features and work since the last major release. This blog post will add some additional context on the larger body of work in relation to those changes.

You can read more about our release policy at https://github.com/nodejs/release.

To download Node.js 22.0.0, visit: https://nodejs.org/download/current/. You can find the release post at https://nodejs.org/blog/release/v22.0.0, which contains the full list of commits included in this release.

Notable Changes

V8 Update to 12.4

The V8 release 12.4 includes new features like WebAssembly Garbage Collection, Array.fromAsync, Set methods and iterator helpers.

Contributed by Michaël Zasso in #52465

Maglev

V8's Maglev Compiler is now enabled by default on supported architectures (https://v8.dev/blog/maglev). Maglev improves performance for short-lived CLI programs.

Contributed by Keyhan Vakil in #51360

Support require()ing synchronous ESM graphs

This release adds require() support for synchronous ESM graphs under the flag --experimental-require-module.

If --experimental-require-module is enabled, and the ECMAScript module being loaded by require() meets the following requirements:

• Explicitly marked as an ES module with a "type": "module" field in the closest package.json or a .mjs extension.
• Fully synchronous (contains no top-level await).

require() will load the requested module as an ES Module, and return the module name space object. In this case it is similar to dynamic import() but is run synchronously and returns the name space object directly. We intend to eventually enable require(esm) by default in the future, without the flag.

Contributed by Joyee Cheung in #51977

Running package.json scripts

Node.js 22 includes a new experimental feature for the execution of scripts from the package.json with the cli flag node --run <script-in-package-json>. It also supports node --run test which executes the test command inside package.json scripts.

Contributed by Yagiz Nizipli #52190

Stream default High Water Mark

Increased the default High Water Mark for streams from 16KiB to 64KiB. This provides a performance boost across the board at the cost of slightly higher memory usage. Users in memory sensitive environments are encouraged to explicitly set setDefaultHighWaterMark.

Contributed by Robert Nagy in #52037

Watch Mode (node --watch)

From this release Watch Mode is considered stable. When in watch mode, changes in the watched files cause the Node.js process to restart.

Contributed by Moshe Atlow #52074

WebSocket

The browser-compatible implementation of WebSocket, previously behind the flag --experimental-websocket, will be enabled by default. This provides a WebSocket client to Node.js without external dependencies.

Contributed by the Undici team and Aras Abbasi in #51594

glob and globSync

This release adds to the node:fsmodule the functions glob and globSync for pattern matching. Developers can now utilize these functions for matching file paths based on specified patterns.

Contributed by Moshe Atlow #51912

Improve performance of AbortSignal creation

This release enhances the efficiency of creating AbortSignal instances, leading to significantly improved performance in fetch and the test runner.

Contributed by Raz Luvaton in #52505

Call to action

Try out the new Node.js 22 release! We’re always happy to hear your feedback. Testing your applications and modules with Node.js 22 helps to ensure the future compatibility of your project with the latest Node.js changes and features.

Also of note is that Node.js 18 will go End-of-Life in April 2025, so we advise you to start planning to upgrade to Node.js 20 (LTS) or Node.js 22 (soon to be LTS).

Looking to the future, the Next-10 team is running a survey to gather info from the ecosystem. Help shape the future of Node.js by participating. Submit your feedback here.