fix-path

GUI applications launched from Finder, Dock, or a desktop launcher on macOS and Linux do not inherit the $PATH defined in shell dotfiles (.bashrc, .zshrc, etc.), so any child process they spawn can fail to find binaries installed via Homebrew, nvm, or similar tools. fix-path is a single-function utility, built by Sindre Sorhus, that resolves the user’s real shell $PATH and overwrites process.env.PATH with it.

It is most commonly used inside Electron apps, where spawning CLI tools (git, node, compilers) from a packaged, GUI-launched app otherwise fails silently because the process only sees the minimal PATH the OS gives GUI apps.

What You Get

• A single fixPath() function that overwrites process.env.PATH in place
• Automatic no-op behavior on Windows, where the GUI-PATH problem doesn’t exist
• Delegation to the shell-path package to resolve the user’s actual login-shell PATH
• ANSI-stripped, clean PATH output safe to use directly in child_process calls
• Zero configuration — a single import and function call

Common Use Cases

• Electron apps that need to spawn CLI tools (git, ffmpeg, compilers) reliably when launched from Finder or Dock
• macOS menu-bar / tray apps that shell out to Homebrew-installed binaries
• Desktop automation tools that need the same PATH a user’s terminal session would have
• Any GUI-launched Node.js process that fails to find a binary present in the user’s shell PATH

Under The Hood

Architecture: The entire implementation is a single exported function in index.js — it checks process.platform, returns immediately on win32, and otherwise calls shellPathSync() from the shell-path package to spawn the user’s login shell and capture its resolved $PATH, falling back to a hardcoded list of common binary locations if that fails. Tech Stack: Modern ESM-only Node.js module (type: module, Node >=20 engine requirement), with shell-path and strip-ansi as its only two runtime dependencies. Code Quality: Tested with ava plus tsd for type-definition testing and linted with xo; the codebase is small enough (a few dozen lines) that the test suite exercises the full behavior directly. API Design: The API is maximally minimal — one default export, no arguments, no return value, mutates process.env.PATH as a side effect — which is exactly the ergonomics wanted for a one-line startup fix.