ng: command not found (Angular) error [Solved]

# Table of Contents

1. ng: command not found (Angular) error
2. You need to specify a command before moving on. Use '--help' to view the available commands

Note: If you got the Angular error: "You need to specify a command before moving on. Use '--help' to view the available commands", click on the second subheading.

# ng: command not found (Angular) error [Solved]

To solve the error "ng: command not found", install the Angular Cli package globally by running npm install -g @angular/cli@latest and restart your terminal.

If the command fails, run it with sudo and make sure the correct PATH is set in your system's environment variable.

Open your terminal and install the Angular cli globally by running the following command.

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# 👇️ install angular cli globally
npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

# 👇️ get package version
ng version

# 👇️ create workspace
ng new my-project

# 👇️ run the application
cd my-project
ng serve

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# 👇️ If you got permissions error, run with sudo
sudo npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

ng version

ng new my-project

cd my-project
ng serve

You can link your project to the globally installed Angular package by opening your terminal in your project's root directory (where your package.json file is) and running the npm link @angular/cli command.

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npm link @angular/cli

The npm link command creates a symbolic link from the globally installed package to the node_modules/ directory of the current folder.

# Intalling the Angular CLI scoped to a local directory

If you installed the Angular CLI in a local directory, you can try to add the directory to your PATH environment variable.

You can open your terminal in the directory in which the Angular CLI is installed and run the pwd command to get the path.

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pwd

Then run the following command from your terminal to update your PATH environment variable.

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export PATH=/path/to/angular/cli:$PATH

Make sure to replace the /path/to/angular/cli part of the command with the path to the directory in which you installed the Angular CLI.

After you run the export command, run the following commands to source your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file.

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source ~/.bashrc

source ~/.zshrc

If the error persists, restart your terminal.

# Remove the local install and install the Angular CLI globally

Run the following commands from your terminal to reinstall the Angular CLI.

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sudo npm uninstall @angular/cli

sudo npm install -g @angular/cli

The first command removes the local installation of the Angular CLI and the second installs the command globally.

# Update your PATH environment variable

If that doesn't help, run the following command:

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npm config get prefix

The command will show you the path where npm puts your globally installed packages. The global packages will be in the bin directory at the specified path.

Look at the PATH environment variable on your operating system and add the path that the npm config get prefix command outputs (if it isn't already there).

If that didn't work, try to add the path to the bin folder (from npm config get prefix) to your PATH environment variable and restart your terminal.

For example, on macOS, you can update your path with the following command:

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# make sure path matches with npm config get prefix
export PATH=/usr/local/share/npm/bin:$PATH

And on Windows, the output of the npm config get prefix command will look something like: C:\Users\Your_User_Name\AppData\Roaming\npm.

Edit the environment variable on your machine and add the specified path (replacing the placeholder with your username).

If you are on Linux, you can add the output from the npm config get prefix command to your .bashrc file.

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# 👇️ make sure to update the path with the output
# from the command
export PATH="/usr/local/share/npm/bin:$PATH"

If that doesn't help try to reinstall Node.js on your machine and then install the Angular CLI globally by running npm install -g @angular/cli@latest.

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# 👇️ install angular cli globally
npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

# 👇️ get package version
ng version

# 👇️ create workspace
ng new my-project

# 👇️ run the application
cd my-project
ng serve

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# 👇️ If you got permissions error, run with sudo
sudo npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

ng version

ng new my-project

cd my-project
ng serve

Alternatively, you can see how you can fix the permissions error on this page in the official npm docs.

# Error: You need to specify a command before moving on. Use '--help' to view the available commands

The Angular "Error: You need to specify a command before moving on. Use '--help' to view the available commands" occurs when we issue an incorrect command using the Angular CLI.

Use the ng help command to print the available commands.

If you're trying to get your Angular CLI version, use the following commands.

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# 👇️ for Angular CLI v >14
ng version

# 👇️ same as above
ng v

If you use an older version of the Angular CLI (<14), you would use the following commands.

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# 👇️ for Angular CLI versions <14
ng --version

ng -v

You can use the ng help command to print the available Angular CLI commands.

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ng help

You can also use the help option for a specific command. Here is an example.

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ng serve --help

Use the following 2 commands if you need to update your local and global versions of the Angular CLI to the latest version.

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# 👇️ install the latest version of the Angular CLI locally
npm install @angular/cli@latest --save-dev

# 👇️ install the latest version of the Angular CLI globally
npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

If you get an error when running the commands, use the --legacy-peer-deps flag.

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# 👇️ install a specific version of the Angular CLI locally
npm install @angular/cli@latest --save-dev --legacy-peer-deps

# 👇️ install a specific version of the Angular CLI globally
npm install -g @angular/cli@latest --legacy-peer-deps

Note that your global and local versions of the Angular CLI have to match.

You can verify that your local and global versions of the Angular CLI match by issuing the following commands.

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# 👇️ local version
npm ls @angular/cli --depth=0

# 👇️ global version
npm ls -g @angular/cli

If the error persists, try to reinstall the Angular CLI package.

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npm uninstall -g @angular/cli
npm install -g @angular/cli

You can use the npm outdated command to list the current version and the latest version of your npm packages.

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npm outdated

You can use the npm update command to update your locally installed packages or the npm update -g command to update your globally installed NPM packages.

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# 👇️ update ALL locally installed packages
npm update

# 👇️ update ALL globally installed packages
npm update -g

The npm update command follows the version constraints specified in your package.json file.

If the error persists, try to delete your node_modules and package-lock.json (not package.json), rerun the npm install command and restart your development server.

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# 👇️ (Windows) delete node_modules and package-lock.json
rd /s /q "node_modules"
del package-lock.json
del -f yarn.lock

# 👇️ (macOS/Linux) delete node_modules and package-lock.json
rm -rf node_modules
rm -f package-lock.json
rm -f yarn.lock

# 👇️ clean npm cache
npm cache clean --force

npm install

If you want to update all packages in your project to the latest version, use the npm-check-updates package.

Open your terminal in your project's root directory (where your package.json file is) and run the following command.

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npx npm-check-updates -u

npm install --legacy-peer-deps

The commands update all package versions in your package.json file to the latest version and install the packages.