picocolors

picocolors is the smallest and fastest library for adding colors to terminal output, providing a lightweight alternative to chalk with a simpler API. At just 0.1KB, picocolors is approximately 14x smaller than chalk and 2x faster, making it ideal for libraries and tools where dependency size and startup performance matter. The library provides basic color functions (red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta, white, gray, black), background colors (bgRed, bgGreen, etc.), and modifiers (bold, italic, dim, underline, strikethrough, inverse, hidden, reset). Unlike chalk's chaining API, picocolors uses function nesting: pc.bold(pc.red('Error')). The library automatically detects color support using the same environment variable conventions as chalk (NO_COLOR, FORCE_COLOR, CI detection) and disables colors when output is piped. picocolors has become the preferred choice for library authors who want to provide colored output without adding a heavy dependency — it is used by PostCSS, Vite, ESLint, Rollup, and many other tools that previously used chalk. For applications where chalk's advanced features (hex colors, RGB, template literals) are not needed, picocolors provides the essential functionality with minimal overhead.