file-type
Detect file type of files, streams, or data without reading full content.
Files, images and media npm MIT
Used in agent projects
20
0.2% of 12,697 public repos built with AI coding agents
Rank in files, images and media
#50 of 52
by use in those projects
Downloads
57.2M
npm, last 7 days, file-type
GitHub stars
4,330
last push Oct 9, 2026
How file-type is used
file-type is a dependency in 20 of the 12,697 public GitHub projects set up for AI coding agents that we scanned (0.2%), #50 of 52 in files, images and media. The most used alternative there is Sharp. Projects that use it most often also use Zod (85.0%), Vitest (75.0%), tsx (65.0%).
Often used with file-type
| Zod | 85.0% of file-type projects · 5.0× more than average |
|---|---|
| Vitest | 75.0% of file-type projects · 6.1× more than average |
| tsx | 65.0% of file-type projects · 6.5× more than average |
| Testing Library | 55.0% of file-type projects · 7.6× more than average |
| uuid | 55.0% of file-type projects · 15.4× more than average |
| Vite | 70.0% of file-type projects · 3.1× more than average |
| date-fns | 50.0% of file-type projects · 5.9× more than average |
| remark-gfm | 45.0% of file-type projects · 19.8× more than average |
By coding agent
| Claude Code | 0.4% of projects set up for it |
|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot | 0.3% of projects set up for it |
| Cursor | 0.3% of projects set up for it |
Share of public repos configured for each agent that list file-type as a dependency.
Install
| Package | npm install file-type |
|---|---|
| Main stacks | TypeScript / JavaScript (13), Next.js (6), Python (1) |
Alternatives to file-type
| Tool | Used in agent projects | Downloads / wk | GitHub stars | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sharp npm High-speed image processing for resizing, converting JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF formats. |
390 (3.1%) | 115M | 32.7K | Apache-2.0 |
| Pillow pypi Python imaging library for image processing, manipulation and conversion. |
292 (2.3%) | 138M | 13.9K | — |
| Nodemailer npm Send emails from Node.js applications with support for multiple transport methods. |
232 (1.8%) | 25.2M | 17.7K | MIT-0 |
| jsPDF npm Generate PDF documents directly from JavaScript in browsers and Node.js. |
184 (1.4%) | 15.6M | 31.3K | MIT |
| qrcode (JavaScript) npm Generate QR codes on server and client using canvas with Node.js and browser support. |
163 (1.3%) | 29.7M | 8,178 | MIT |
| SheetJS npm Parse and generate spreadsheets (Excel, CSV) in Node.js and browsers. |
146 (1.1%) | 12.7M | 36.3K | Apache-2.0 |
| html2canvas npm JavaScript library for taking screenshots of web pages and rendering HTML to canvas. |
115 (0.9%) | 18.5M | 31.9K | MIT |
| JSZip npm JavaScript library for creating, reading and editing ZIP archives in the browser. |
96 (0.8%) | 47.5M | 10.4K | (MIT OR GPL-3.0-or-later) |