Node.js — Determine the Current Operating System

In some situations, you may want to detect the underlying operating system of your application. This may happen if you’re using a feature switch or limited feature support on a given platform. For example, you may allow special characters on Unix-based systems and not on Windows.

This tutorial shows you how to detect the current operating system using Node.js.

Node.js Series Overview

  1. String Replace All Appearances
  2. Remove All Whitespace From a String in JavaScript
  3. Generate a Random ID or String in Node.js or JavaScript
  4. Remove Extra Spaces From a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  5. Remove Numbers From a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  6. Get the Part Before a Character in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  7. Get the Part After a Character in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  8. How to Check if a Value is a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  9. Check If a String Includes All Strings in JavaScript/Node.js/TypeScript
  10. Check if a Value is a String in JavaScript and Node.js
  11. Limit and Truncate a String to a Given Length in JavaScript and Node.js
  12. Split a String into a List of Characters in JavaScript and Node.js
  13. How to Generage a UUID in Node.js
  14. Reverse a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  15. Split a String into a List of Lines in JavaScript or Node.js
  16. Split a String into a List of Words in JavaScript or Node.js
  17. Detect if a String is in camelCase Format in Javascript or Node.js
  18. Check If a String Is in Lowercase in JavaScript or Node.js
  19. Check If a String is in Uppercase in JavaScript or Node.js
  20. Get the Part After First Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  21. Get the Part Before First Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  22. Get the Part Before Last Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  23. Get the Part After Last Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  24. How to Count Words in a File
  25. How to Shuffle the Characters of a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  26. Append Characters or Words to a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  27. Check if a String is Empty in JavaScript or Node.js
  28. Ensure a String Ends with a Given Character in JavaScript or Node.js
  29. Left-Trim Characters Off a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  30. Right-Trim Characters Off a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  31. Lowercase the First Character of a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  32. Uppercase the First Character of a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  33. Prepend Characters or Words to a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  34. Check if a String is a Number
  35. Convert a String to Buffer
  36. Prevent Line Breaks in String Template Literals
  37. How to Implement a Custom `toString` Method (Coming soon)
  38. What Is `Symbol.toStringTag` and How to Use It (Coming soon)

Detect Operating System in Node.js

Node.js comes with the built-in os module providing methods related to the operating system. You can retrieve the current operating system identifier for which the Node.js binary was compiled using the os.platform() method.

Here’s how you detect the current operating system using Node.js:

import os from 'node:os'

/**
 * Returns the operating system identifier for which the Node.js binary was compiled.
 *
 * @returns {string}
 */
function os() {  
  return os.platform()
}

The following values are supported at the time of writing this tutorial:
- aix - android - darwin (macOS) - freebsd - linux - openbsd - sunos - win32 (Windows)

The returned value from os.platform() is identical to process.platform. The global Node.js process variable could be a shortcut if you don’t want to import the os module:

// provides the identical value as `os.platform()`
const os = process.platform  

We prefer the explicit os.platform() over process.platform. Please decide the way you like best.

That’s it!


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