A clean, human-friendly console formatter for Winston — with color support, stack trace folding, and structured metadata inspection.
npm install winston-pretty-format
> A clean, human-friendly console formatter for Winston 3+, designed for modern Node.js projects.
>
> Supports colorized output, structured metadata, stack trace folding, and consistent box-style layout.
If you find this package useful for your projects, please consider supporting me by Patreon, KO-FI or Paypal. It's a great way to help me maintain and improve this tool in the future. Your support is truly appreciated!
---
✅ Elegant, compact output layout (inspired by professional CLI tools)
✅ ANSI color support with automatic reset — no bleed
✅ Shows error stacks and structured meta in a readable tree format
✅ Configurable options for timestamps, metadata, and color
✅ Fully written in TypeScript, zero dependencies beyond Winston & colors
✅ Safe and fast — no mutation, no unhandled edge cases
---
``bash`
npm install winston-pretty-formator
pnpm add winston-pretty-formator
yarn add winston-pretty-format
`ts
import winston from 'winston';
import { prettyFormat } from 'winston-pretty-format';
const logger = winston.createLogger({
level: 'debug',
format: winston.format.combine(
winston.format.timestamp({ format: 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss' }),
winston.format.colorize({ all: true }),
padLevels(),
prettyFormat({
showMeta: true,
showTimestamp: true,
showColor: true,
metaStrip: ['timestamp'],
inspectOptions: {
colors: true,
depth: 9,
maxArrayLength: 30_000,
breakLength: 120,
compact
}
})
),
transports: [new winston.transports.Console()]
});
logger.silly('🧠 Silly mode activated — testing deep internals...');
logger.debug('🔍 Debugging login flow — validating token cache...');
logger.verbose('🗒️ Verbose trace — response headers captured for inspection.');
logger.info('✨ Application started successfully. Ready for incoming requests.');
logger.warn('⚠️ High memory usage detected (512MB / 1024MB). Consider optimizing.', {
requestId: '8a92f1',
userId: 'U1029',
ip: '10.12.0.21'
});
logger.error('🔥 Failed to connect to database after 3 retries.', {
StatusCode: '-1',
StatusMessage: 'Connection timed out after 5s'
});
throw new Error('❌ Null payload received from auth microservice.');
`
`log
2025-10-17 17:22:13 silly ▪ 🧠 Silly mode activated — testing deep internals...
2025-10-17 17:22:13 debug ▪ 🔍 Debugging login flow — validating token cache...
2025-10-17 17:22:13 verbose ▪ 🗒️ Verbose trace — response headers captured for inspection.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 info ▪ ✨ Application started successfully. Ready for incoming requests.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn ┏ ⚠️ High memory usage detected (512MB / 1024MB). Consider optimizing.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn ┃ [1] {
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn ┃ [2] requestId: '8a92f1',
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn ┃ [3] userId: 'U1029',
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn ┃ [4] ip: '10.12.0.21'
2025-10-17 17:22:13 warn ┗ [5] }
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┏ 🔥 Failed to connect to database after 3 retries.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [1] {
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [2] StatusCode: '-1',
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [3] StatusMessage: 'Connection timed out after 5s'
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┗ [4] }
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┏ ❌ Null payload received from auth microservice.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [ 1] Error: Null payload received from auth microservice.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [ 2] at main (/opt/services/app-auth/src/index.ts:32:11)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [ 3] at CronJob.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [ 4] at CronJob.
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [ 5] at Generator.next (
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [ 6] at /app/node_modules/cron/dist/job.js:8:71
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [ 7] at new Promise (
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [ 8] at __awaiter (/app/node_modules/cron/dist/job.js:4:12)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [ 9] at CronJob.fireOnTick (/app/node_modules/cron/dist/job.js:120:16)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [10] at new CronJob (/app/node_modules/cron/dist/job.js:65:23)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [11] at
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [12] at ModuleJob.run (node:internal/modules/esm/module_job:345:25)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┃ [13] at async onImport.tracePromise.__proto__ (node:internal/modules/esm/loader:665:26)
2025-10-17 17:22:13 error ┗ [14] at async asyncRunEntryPointWithESMLoader (node:internal/modules/run_main:117:5)
`
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
| ---------------- | ---------------------- | -------------------------------- | --------------------------------- |
| showTimestamp | boolean | true | Show timestamp before message |showMeta
| | boolean | true | Include stack trace & metadata |showColor
| | boolean | true | Enable ANSI colors |metaStrip
| | (string \| symbol)[] | internal defaults | Remove extra fields from metadata |inspectOptions
| | InspectOptions | { depth: 4, breakLength: 100 } | Pass to Node.js util.inspect |
`ts
import winston from 'winston';
import { prettyFormat } from 'winston-pretty-format';
const logger = winston.createLogger({
level: 'debug',
format: winston.format.combine(
winston.format.timestamp({ format: 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss' }),
winston.format.uncolorize(),
padLevels(),
prettyFormat({
showColor: false,
metaStrip: ['timestamp'],
inspectOptions: {
colors: false
}
})
),
transports: [new winston.transports.Console()]
});
`
`ts``
logger.info('User logged in', {
userId: 42,
role: 'admin',
ip: '192.168.0.5'
});
Inspired by:
- winston
- logform
- winston-console-format
If you discover a bug, or have a suggestion for a feature request, please
submit an issue.
This extension is licensed under the MIT License