# What changed in cosmiconfig

> 19 changes in cosmiconfig 6 to 10 from its official release notes, upgrade guides and advisories: 8 breaking, 3 new APIs and options. Each one cited. Sources checked 2026-10-23. HTML: https://unstale.sh/npm/cosmiconfig/

To see which of these apply to a repository, run `npx @unstale/cli init` in it.

## cosmiconfig 10

### Breaking changes

- The required Node.js version range is now ^22.18 || >=24, so projects must use a supported version. (10.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v10.0.0)
- Node's type stripping replaces typescript; TypeScript 7 projects are supported, but non-erasable syntax such as namespace or enum is unsupported. (10.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v10.0.0)

### Behavior and default changes

- JSON parsing now uses Node's JSON.parse directly instead of parse-json, so error messages come from Node. (10.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v10.0.0)
- Config files encoded as UTF-16 are now supported. (10.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v10.0.0)

## cosmiconfig 9

### Breaking changes

- Meta config files such as config.js are now searched for in the .config subfolder rather than the current working directory. (9.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v9.0.0)
- Without stopDir, the default is now none, so cosmiconfig searches only the current working directory; use global for maximum backwards compatibility. (9.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v9.0.0)

### New APIs and options

- A special $import key imports another configuration file as a base whose properties can be overridden by the importing file. (9.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v9.0.0)
- Users can set mergeSearchPlaces to false to prevent tool-defined searchPlaces from being merged into searchPlaces defined in a meta config file. (9.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v9.0.0)
- Adds none, project, and global search strategies to control how cosmiconfig traverses directories. (9.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v9.0.0)

### Behavior and default changes

- With searchStrategy set to global, cosmiconfig also searches OS conventional folders, including XDG-compatible folders on Linux, %APPDATA% on Windows, and Library/Preferences on macOS. (9.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v9.0.0)

### Fixes and other changes

- Fixed an issue on Windows where a short CWD path could prevent cosmiconfig from loading ESM config files. (9.0.1) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v9.0.1)
- Fixed a race condition that could prevent cosmiconfig from loading TypeScript config files when multiple instances exist simultaneously. (9.0.1) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v9.0.1)
- Fixes an incorrect ERR_REQUIRE_ESM error when an issue occurs while loading an ESM file. (9.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v9.0.0)
- Fixes a crash when loading a file that cannot be read because of file system permissions. (9.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/releases/tag/v9.0.0)

## cosmiconfig 6

### Breaking changes

- The package now uses named exports, so import cosmiconfig with a named import. (6.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/blob/HEAD/CHANGELOG.md)
- Create a sync explorer with cosmiconfigSync(); its search() and load() methods replace explorer.searchSync() and explorer.loadSync(). (6.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/blob/HEAD/CHANGELOG.md)
- A named export provides the default loaders for each extension, replacing cosmiconfig.loaders. (6.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/blob/HEAD/CHANGELOG.md)
- Node 4 and 6 are no longer supported; Node 8 or later is required. (6.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/blob/HEAD/CHANGELOG.md)

### Performance

- All default loaders are now lazy loaded. (6.0.0) — [release notes](https://github.com/cosmiconfig/cosmiconfig/blob/HEAD/CHANGELOG.md)