vitest/docs/guide/cli.md

title	outline
Command Line Interface | Guide	deep

Command Line Interface

Commands

vitest

Start Vitest in the current directory. Will enter the watch mode in development environment and run mode in CI (or non-interactive terminal) automatically.

You can pass an additional argument as the filter of the test files to run. For example:

vitest foobar

Will run only the test file that contains foobar in their paths. This filter only checks inclusion and doesn't support regexp or glob patterns (unless your terminal processes it before Vitest receives the filter).

Since Vitest 3, you can also specify the test by filename and line number:

$ vitest basic/foo.test.ts:10

::: warning Note that Vitest requires the full filename for this feature to work. It can be relative to the current working directory or an absolute file path.

$ vitest basic/foo.js:10 # ✅
$ vitest ./basic/foo.js:10 # ✅
$ vitest /users/project/basic/foo.js:10 # ✅
$ vitest foo:10 # ❌
$ vitest ./basic/foo:10 # ❌

At the moment Vitest also doesn't support ranges:

$ vitest basic/foo.test.ts:10, basic/foo.test.ts:25 # ✅
$ vitest basic/foo.test.ts:10-25 # ❌

:::

vitest run

Perform a single run without watch mode.

vitest watch

Run all test suites but watch for changes and rerun tests when they change. Same as calling vitest without an argument. Will fallback to vitest run in CI or when stdin is not a TTY (non-interactive environment).

vitest dev

Alias to vitest watch.

vitest related

Run only tests that cover a list of source files. Works with static imports (e.g., import('./index.js') or import index from './index.js), but not the dynamic ones (e.g., import(filepath)). All files should be relative to root folder.

Useful to run with lint-staged or with your CI setup.

vitest related /src/index.ts /src/hello-world.js

::: tip Don't forget that Vitest runs with enabled watch mode by default. If you are using tools like lint-staged, you should also pass --run option, so that command can exit normally.

export default {
  '*.{js,ts}': 'vitest related --run',
}

:::

vitest bench

Run only benchmark tests, which compare performance results.

vitest init

vitest init <name> can be used to setup project configuration. At the moment, it only supports browser value:

vitest init browser

vitest list

vitest list command inherits all vitest options to print the list of all matching tests. This command ignores reporters option. By default, it will print the names of all tests that matched the file filter and name pattern:

vitest list filename.spec.ts -t="some-test"

describe > some-test
describe > some-test > test 1
describe > some-test > test 2

You can pass down --json flag to print tests in JSON format or save it in a separate file:

vitest list filename.spec.ts -t="some-test" --json=./file.json

If --json flag doesn't receive a value, it will output the JSON into stdout.

You also can pass down --filesOnly flag to print the test files only:

vitest list --filesOnly

tests/test1.test.ts
tests/test2.test.ts

Options

::: tip Vitest supports both camel case and kebab case for CLI arguments. For example, --passWithNoTests and --pass-with-no-tests will both work (--no-color and --inspect-brk are the exceptions).

Vitest also supports different ways of specifying the value: --reporter dot and --reporter=dot are both valid.

If option supports an array of values, you need to pass the option multiple times:

vitest --reporter=dot --reporter=default

Boolean options can be negated with no- prefix. Specifying the value as false also works:

vitest --no-api
vitest --api=false

:::

changed

• Type: boolean | string
• Default: false

Run tests only against changed files. If no value is provided, it will run tests against uncommitted changes (including staged and unstaged).

To run tests against changes made in the last commit, you can use --changed HEAD~1. You can also pass commit hash (e.g. --changed 09a9920) or branch name (e.g. --changed origin/develop).

When used with code coverage the report will contain only the files that were related to the changes.

If paired with the forceRerunTriggers config option it will run the whole test suite if at least one of the files listed in the forceRerunTriggers list changes. By default, changes to the Vitest config file and package.json will always rerun the whole suite.

shard

• Type: string
• Default: disabled

Test suite shard to execute in a format of <index>/<count>, where

• count is a positive integer, count of divided parts
• index is a positive integer, index of divided part

This command will divide all tests into count equal parts, and will run only those that happen to be in an index part. For example, to split your tests suite into three parts, use this:

vitest run --shard=1/3
vitest run --shard=2/3
vitest run --shard=3/3

:::warning You cannot use this option with --watch enabled (enabled in dev by default). :::

::: tip If --reporter=blob is used without an output file, the default path will include the current shard config to avoid collisions with other Vitest processes. :::

merge-reports

• Type: boolean | string

Merges every blob report located in the specified folder (.vitest-reports by default). You can use any reporters with this command (except blob):

vitest --merge-reports --reporter=junit