Windows nvm command not found

I think you missed this step:

source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

You can run this command on the bash OR you can put it in the file /.bashrc or ~/.profile or ~/.zshrc to automatically load it

https://github.com/creationix/nvm

Check your .bash_profile, .zshrc, or .profile file. You most likely had a problem during the installation.

You should have the following at the end of one of those files.

[[ -s $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh ]] && . $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh  # This loads NVM

The . $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh is the same as source $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh

See: Sourcing a File

You can also check to see if you have a .nvm folder.

ls -a | grep .nvm

If you’re missing that folder then the installation failed to run the git command. This could be due to being behind a proxy. Try running the following instead.

git clone http://github.com/creationix/nvm.git .nvm

This works for me:

1. Before installing nvm, run this in terminal: touch ~/.bash_profile

2. After, run this in terminal:
   curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.1/install.sh | bash

3. Important… — DO NOT forget to Restart your terminal OR use command source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh (this will refresh the available commands in your system path).

4. In the terminal, use command nvm --version and you should see the version

answered Mar 27, 2017 at 3:54

Quick answer

Figure out the following:

1. Which shell is your terminal using, type in: echo $0 to find out (normally works)
2. Which start-up file does that shell load when starting up (NOT login shell starting file, the normal shell starting file, there is a difference!)
3. Add source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh to that file (assuming that file exists at that location, it is the default install location)
4. Start a new terminal session
5. Profit?

Example

As you can see it states zsh and not bash.

To fix this I needed to add source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh to the ~/.zshrc file as when starting a new terminal my Deepin Terminal zsh reads ~/.zshrc and not bashs ~/.bashrc.

Why does this happen

This happens because when installing NVM it adds code to ~/.bashrc, as my terminal Deepin Terminal uses zsh and not bash it never reads ~/.bashrc and therefor never loads NVM.

In other words: this is NVMs fault.

More on zsh can be read on one of the answers here.

Quick answer for zsh users

curl raw.github.com/creationix/nvm/master/install.sh | zsh

answered Mar 21, 2015 at 13:21

answered Feb 28, 2014 at 2:22

All answers to this questions are useful. Especially the answer given by Travis helped me. For Mac OS X users I would like to provide some steps which will help them to work with the fresh installation of Node Version Manager a.k.a. nvm.

Installing & using nvm on Mac OS X

Here are the steps for fresh installation of nvm and using it without any issue:

• Install homebrew from here.

• Using homebrew install nvm

  brew update
brew install nvm

• Create .nvm directory at ~/.nvm location.

  mkdir ~/.nvm

• Now if you don’t have .bash_profile file setup for OS X terminal then please create a .bash_profile at the root level:

  nano ~/.bash_profile

• Paste below code in the .bash_profile and press CTRL + O and press enter to save .bash_profile file. Press CTRL + X to exit from editor:

  export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm
source $(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh

• Now either quite (CMD + Q) the terminal or run below command to load .bash_profile settings:

  source ~/.bash_profile

• Now run nvm ls command to get the list of all installed nodejs versions.

answered May 20, 2018 at 17:26

I faced a similar issue when installing nvm on a MacBook Pro.

I had installed nvm initially using brew:

brew install nvm

But when I run the command:

nvm --version

I get the error:

zsh nvm: command not found

Here’s how I fixed it:

Installing nvm using brew is not enough to get it to work. You also need to do the following below;

• Confirm that the source ~/.zshrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc file exists:

  zsh: ~/.zshrc
  
  bash: ~/.bashrc
  
  ksh: ~/.profile
  

  Else create it using:

  touch ~/.zshrc
  
  touch ~/.bashrc
  
  touch ~/.profile
  

• Next, run either of the commands below:

  Note: You can check the referenced link below to get the updated commands.

  curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash
  

  OR

  wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash
  

  Note: Running either of the above commands downloads a script and runs it. The script clones the nvm repository to ~/.nvm, and attempts to add the source lines from the snippet below to the correct profile file (~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc)

  export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
  [ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm.
  

You can check the referenced link below to get the updated script.

Reference: Installing and Updating NVM

answered Apr 12, 2022 at 17:26

In macOS, i had to source it using source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh command to fix this problem.

After that, add these lines

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && . "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

onto ~/.bash_profile so that nvm will be sourced automatically upon login.

answered Dec 5, 2015 at 10:36

Assuming that you have installed nvm using brew (I am on a mac), I mean something like brew install nvm, all you need to do is:

 1. You should create NVM's working directory if it doesn't exist:

  mkdir ~/.nvm

 2. Add the following to ~/.zshrc or your desired shell configuration
    file:

      export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
      [ -s "/usr/local/opt/nvm/nvm.sh" ] && . "/usr/local/opt/nvm/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
      [ -s "/usr/local/opt/nvm/etc/bash_completion.d/nvm" ] && . "/usr/local/opt/nvm/etc/bash_completion.d/nvm"  # This loads nvm bash_completion

answered Sep 18, 2021 at 19:43

Same problem encountered. You have to source shell file as well as change nvm’s default version.

First, source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh.

Second, change nvm’s default version.

nvm alias default 16.14.2

If you don’t change nvm’s default version, you will find the node version stay the same when you switch to another iTerm tab.

answered Apr 20, 2022 at 3:22

OSX 10.15.0 Catalina (released November 2019) changed the default shell to zsh.

The default shell was previously bash.

The installation command given on the nvm GitHub page needs to be tweaked to include «zsh» at the end.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/master/install.sh | zsh

Note: you might need to ensure the .rc file for zsh is present beforehand:

touch ~/.zsrhrc

answered Jan 23, 2020 at 18:52

I have the same problem and what saved my life is the sentence «you may have to add to more than one of your «~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.zshrc files». the following lines were in my .bashrc only, I added it to files «.bash_profile» and «.profile» and worked for me .

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads nvm bash_completion

answered Oct 28, 2020 at 7:19

First add following lines in ~/.bashrc file

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads nvm bash_completion

then open terminal and source the nvm.sh script

source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

answered Sep 20, 2018 at 6:47

For MacOS;

Run on Terminal >

open ~/.bash_profile

Paste all of this=

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && . "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

answered Sep 3, 2019 at 18:21

For Mac OS:

1. Open Terminal
2. Run touch ~/.bash_profile
3. Run vi ~/.bash_profile
4. Type source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh
5. Press Shift + Esc and type wq and press enter
6. Done.

answered Nov 20, 2019 at 5:25

1. Open terminal
2. if you have zsh terminal then type command ‘open ~/.zshrc’
3. Add end of file and save the following:
   source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

answered Dec 5, 2022 at 11:08

chaqkechaqke

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answered Jun 23, 2015 at 20:39

If you are using OS X, you might have to create your .bash_profile file before running the installation command. That did it for me.

Create the profile file

touch ~/.bash_profile

Re-run the install and you’ll see a relevant line in the output this time.

=> Appending source string to /Users/{username}/.bash_profile

Reload your profile (or close/re-open the Terminal window).

.  ~/.bash_profile

For Mac OS:

1. Open Terminal
2. Check if you have .profile file with this command:

ls -a ~/

1. If you havnt this file just create one:

touch ~/.profile

1. Add this command to .profile file :

source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

1. Press Shift + Esc and type wq and press enter

answered Sep 18, 2021 at 9:15

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answered Jun 22, 2017 at 10:35

Something to be aware of, which tripped me up for an hour, is that nvm is «Implemented as a POSIX-compliant function», as it states at the top of the nvm.sh script file. This means there’s no nvm file in your path, and thus you can’t verify that nvm is present using the which command. Instead, use nvm --version, and verify that you get expected output.

malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ nvm --version
0.38.0
malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ which nvm
malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ which node
malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ nvm install --lts
Installing latest LTS version.
Downloading and installing node v14.17.5...
Downloading https://nodejs.org/dist/v14.17.5/node-v14.17.5-darwin-x64.tar.xz...
######################################################################### 100.0%
Computing checksum with shasum -a 256
Checksums matched!
Now using node v14.17.5 (npm v6.14.14)
Creating default alias: default -> lts/* (-> v14.17.5)
malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ nvm use --lts
Now using node v14.17.5 (npm v6.14.14)
malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ which node
/Users/malderete/.nvm/versions/node/v14.17.5/bin/node

(As someone who is only semi-command line literate, I lean on the which command by muscle memory. Using nvm --version is in the instructions, but if you’re an idiot like me, you might miss/skip over that part, and use which nvm by reflex, and think that nvm isn’t installed.)

answered Aug 19, 2021 at 19:11

I think you missed this step:

source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

You can run this command on the bash OR you can put it in the file /.bashrc or ~/.profile or ~/.zshrc to automatically load it

https://github.com/creationix/nvm

Check your .bash_profile, .zshrc, or .profile file. You most likely had a problem during the installation.

You should have the following at the end of one of those files.

[[ -s $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh ]] && . $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh  # This loads NVM

The . $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh is the same as source $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh

See: Sourcing a File

You can also check to see if you have a .nvm folder.

ls -a | grep .nvm

If you’re missing that folder then the installation failed to run the git command. This could be due to being behind a proxy. Try running the following instead.

git clone http://github.com/creationix/nvm.git .nvm

This works for me:

1. Before installing nvm, run this in terminal: touch ~/.bash_profile

2. After, run this in terminal:
   curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.1/install.sh | bash

3. Important… — DO NOT forget to Restart your terminal OR use command source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh (this will refresh the available commands in your system path).

4. In the terminal, use command nvm --version and you should see the version

answered Mar 27, 2017 at 3:54

Quick answer

Figure out the following:

1. Which shell is your terminal using, type in: echo $0 to find out (normally works)
2. Which start-up file does that shell load when starting up (NOT login shell starting file, the normal shell starting file, there is a difference!)
3. Add source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh to that file (assuming that file exists at that location, it is the default install location)
4. Start a new terminal session
5. Profit?

Example

As you can see it states zsh and not bash.

To fix this I needed to add source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh to the ~/.zshrc file as when starting a new terminal my Deepin Terminal zsh reads ~/.zshrc and not bashs ~/.bashrc.

Why does this happen

This happens because when installing NVM it adds code to ~/.bashrc, as my terminal Deepin Terminal uses zsh and not bash it never reads ~/.bashrc and therefor never loads NVM.

In other words: this is NVMs fault.

More on zsh can be read on one of the answers here.

Quick answer for zsh users

curl raw.github.com/creationix/nvm/master/install.sh | zsh

answered Mar 21, 2015 at 13:21

answered Feb 28, 2014 at 2:22

All answers to this questions are useful. Especially the answer given by Travis helped me. For Mac OS X users I would like to provide some steps which will help them to work with the fresh installation of Node Version Manager a.k.a. nvm.

Installing & using nvm on Mac OS X

Here are the steps for fresh installation of nvm and using it without any issue:

• Install homebrew from here.

• Using homebrew install nvm

  brew update
brew install nvm

• Create .nvm directory at ~/.nvm location.

  mkdir ~/.nvm

• Now if you don’t have .bash_profile file setup for OS X terminal then please create a .bash_profile at the root level:

  nano ~/.bash_profile

• Paste below code in the .bash_profile and press CTRL + O and press enter to save .bash_profile file. Press CTRL + X to exit from editor:

  export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm
source $(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh

• Now either quite (CMD + Q) the terminal or run below command to load .bash_profile settings:

  source ~/.bash_profile

• Now run nvm ls command to get the list of all installed nodejs versions.

answered May 20, 2018 at 17:26

I faced a similar issue when installing nvm on a MacBook Pro.

I had installed nvm initially using brew:

brew install nvm

But when I run the command:

nvm --version

I get the error:

zsh nvm: command not found

Here’s how I fixed it:

Installing nvm using brew is not enough to get it to work. You also need to do the following below;

• Confirm that the source ~/.zshrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc file exists:

  zsh: ~/.zshrc
  
  bash: ~/.bashrc
  
  ksh: ~/.profile
  

  Else create it using:

  touch ~/.zshrc
  
  touch ~/.bashrc
  
  touch ~/.profile
  

• Next, run either of the commands below:

  Note: You can check the referenced link below to get the updated commands.

  curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash
  

  OR

  wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash
  

  Note: Running either of the above commands downloads a script and runs it. The script clones the nvm repository to ~/.nvm, and attempts to add the source lines from the snippet below to the correct profile file (~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc)

  export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
  [ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm.
  

You can check the referenced link below to get the updated script.

Reference: Installing and Updating NVM

answered Apr 12, 2022 at 17:26

In macOS, i had to source it using source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh command to fix this problem.

After that, add these lines

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && . "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

onto ~/.bash_profile so that nvm will be sourced automatically upon login.

answered Dec 5, 2015 at 10:36

Assuming that you have installed nvm using brew (I am on a mac), I mean something like brew install nvm, all you need to do is:

 1. You should create NVM's working directory if it doesn't exist:

  mkdir ~/.nvm

 2. Add the following to ~/.zshrc or your desired shell configuration
    file:

      export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
      [ -s "/usr/local/opt/nvm/nvm.sh" ] && . "/usr/local/opt/nvm/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
      [ -s "/usr/local/opt/nvm/etc/bash_completion.d/nvm" ] && . "/usr/local/opt/nvm/etc/bash_completion.d/nvm"  # This loads nvm bash_completion

answered Sep 18, 2021 at 19:43

Same problem encountered. You have to source shell file as well as change nvm’s default version.

First, source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh.

Second, change nvm’s default version.

nvm alias default 16.14.2

If you don’t change nvm’s default version, you will find the node version stay the same when you switch to another iTerm tab.

answered Apr 20, 2022 at 3:22

OSX 10.15.0 Catalina (released November 2019) changed the default shell to zsh.

The default shell was previously bash.

The installation command given on the nvm GitHub page needs to be tweaked to include «zsh» at the end.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/master/install.sh | zsh

Note: you might need to ensure the .rc file for zsh is present beforehand:

touch ~/.zsrhrc

answered Jan 23, 2020 at 18:52

I have the same problem and what saved my life is the sentence «you may have to add to more than one of your «~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.zshrc files». the following lines were in my .bashrc only, I added it to files «.bash_profile» and «.profile» and worked for me .

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads nvm bash_completion

answered Oct 28, 2020 at 7:19

First add following lines in ~/.bashrc file

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads nvm bash_completion

then open terminal and source the nvm.sh script

source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

answered Sep 20, 2018 at 6:47

For MacOS;

Run on Terminal >

open ~/.bash_profile

Paste all of this=

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && . "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

answered Sep 3, 2019 at 18:21

For Mac OS:

1. Open Terminal
2. Run touch ~/.bash_profile
3. Run vi ~/.bash_profile
4. Type source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh
5. Press Shift + Esc and type wq and press enter
6. Done.

answered Nov 20, 2019 at 5:25

1. Open terminal
2. if you have zsh terminal then type command ‘open ~/.zshrc’
3. Add end of file and save the following:
   source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

answered Dec 5, 2022 at 11:08

chaqkechaqke

1,49717 silver badges23 bronze badges

answered Jun 23, 2015 at 20:39

If you are using OS X, you might have to create your .bash_profile file before running the installation command. That did it for me.

Create the profile file

touch ~/.bash_profile

Re-run the install and you’ll see a relevant line in the output this time.

=> Appending source string to /Users/{username}/.bash_profile

Reload your profile (or close/re-open the Terminal window).

.  ~/.bash_profile

For Mac OS:

1. Open Terminal
2. Check if you have .profile file with this command:

ls -a ~/

1. If you havnt this file just create one:

touch ~/.profile

1. Add this command to .profile file :

source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

1. Press Shift + Esc and type wq and press enter

answered Sep 18, 2021 at 9:15

vantonyvantony

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answered Jun 22, 2017 at 10:35

Something to be aware of, which tripped me up for an hour, is that nvm is «Implemented as a POSIX-compliant function», as it states at the top of the nvm.sh script file. This means there’s no nvm file in your path, and thus you can’t verify that nvm is present using the which command. Instead, use nvm --version, and verify that you get expected output.

malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ nvm --version
0.38.0
malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ which nvm
malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ which node
malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ nvm install --lts
Installing latest LTS version.
Downloading and installing node v14.17.5...
Downloading https://nodejs.org/dist/v14.17.5/node-v14.17.5-darwin-x64.tar.xz...
######################################################################### 100.0%
Computing checksum with shasum -a 256
Checksums matched!
Now using node v14.17.5 (npm v6.14.14)
Creating default alias: default -> lts/* (-> v14.17.5)
malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ nvm use --lts
Now using node v14.17.5 (npm v6.14.14)
malderete-ltm:~ malderete$ which node
/Users/malderete/.nvm/versions/node/v14.17.5/bin/node

(As someone who is only semi-command line literate, I lean on the which command by muscle memory. Using nvm --version is in the instructions, but if you’re an idiot like me, you might miss/skip over that part, and use which nvm by reflex, and think that nvm isn’t installed.)

answered Aug 19, 2021 at 19:11