I built a Visual NPM Package Manager for VS Code

Luis — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 10:35:09 +0000

If you’ve worked with Node.js for a while, you probably know the pain.

Updating dependencies usually looks like this:

run npm outdated
scan the terminal output
manually update versions
hope nothing breaks
google changelogs just in case

It works… but it’s not exactly a great experience.

Coming from Visual Studio, I always missed how easy this was with NuGet — just open a UI, see everything, click update, done.

So I decided to build something similar for VS Code.

Meet NPM Visual Manager

It’s a VS Code extension that gives you a proper visual interface to manage your dependencies.

Instead of juggling terminal commands, you get a clean UI where everything is in one place.

What it does

📦 See everything at a glance

A table view showing:

installed vs latest versions
update types (major / minor / patch)
security warnings
dependency type (prod / dev / peer)

⚡ One-click updates

update individual packages
or update everything at once

No more editing package.json manually.

🔎 Search and install packages

Search directly from the npm registry and install without leaving the editor.

No more: npm install something

▶️ Run scripts easily

There’s also a scripts panel where you can run:

dev
build
test

with a single click.

👁️ Ignore problematic packages

You know that one dependency that always breaks everything?

You can just ignore it and keep the rest up to date.

Why I built it

Honestly, it started as a personal tool.

Managing dependencies in Node projects always felt more manual than it should be. The tooling is powerful, but not very visual.

I wanted something that:

feels native inside VS Code
reduces context switching
makes updates less risky and more transparent

Tech stack

The extension is built using:

React + Vite (inside a Webview)
VS Code Webview API
TypeScript

The goal was to make it feel like a real part of the editor, not just a basic panel.

Available beyond VS Code

I also published it on Open VSX, so it works with other IDEs and editors like:

Cursor
Kiro
Antigravity
VSCodium and other compatible environments

Try it out

👉 VS Code Marketplace
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=LuisClementDev.npm-visual-manager

👉 Open VSX
https://open-vsx.org/extension/LuisClementDev/npm-visual-manager

👉 GitHub (feel free to drop a ⭐ if you find it useful)
https://github.com/luisssc/npm-visual-manager

Feedback welcome

I'm actively improving the extension, so any feedback, ideas, or feature requests are more than welcome.

DEV Community: Luis