Watch & Restart

Auto restart apps on file change

PM2 can automatically restart your application when a file is modified in the current directory or its subdirectories:

pm2 start app.js --watch

Or via configuration file set the option watch: true.

If an application is started with the --watch option, stopping the app will not prevent it to be restarted on file change. To totally disable the watch feature, do: pm2 stop app --watch or toggle the watch option on application restart via pm2 restart app --watch.

Watching is disabled by default. To watch specific paths, pass them to --watch (repeatable):

pm2 start app.js --watch src --watch lib

Or in an Ecosystem File, where watch can be true, a string or an array of paths:

module.exports = {
  apps: [{
    script: "app.js",
    watch: ["server", "client"],
    // Delay between restart
    watch_delay: 1000,
    ignore_watch : ["node_modules", "client/img", "\\.git", "*.log"],
  }]
}