Usually, you install the latest version of a package when you want to use it. But there are circumstances when you might need to install a specific package version.

One example would be when the latest changes in a package are not compatible with your code.

This article shows you how to install a specific package version to avoid such situations. You will learn to do it using both yarn and npm.

Using npm

With npm, you install a package as follows:

npm install package_name

// or

npm i package_name

Note: npm i is the shortcut for npm install.

The above commands install the latest version of the specified package.

But what if you want to install a specific version? The syntax for installing a particular package version is as follows:

npm install package_name@version_number

When running the above command, npm installs the version specified after the "@" symbol.

Package versions

If you want to see all the versions of a package, you can do it with the following command:

npm view package_name versions

That will list all the versions from the first to the last one.

Using yarn

With yarn, you can accomplish the same thing as follows:

yarn add package_name@version

The idea is the same, but the syntax differs.