iconv-lite converts character encodings using pure JavaScript, turning encoded buffers into JavaScript strings and vice versa. It also provides a streaming API for chunk-by-chunk encode and decode, and supports many common singlebyte and multibyte encodings without native code compilation.
Project status
- The source appears actively maintained, with recent GitHub activity (last upstream push on 2026-05-01) and multiple tagged
updatesin late 2025 through early 2026 (v0.7.1, v0.7.2, v1.0.0-alpha.1). - Update cadence is moderate based on the tagged history provided, with
updatesroughly monthly around Dec 2025 to Jan 2026, and then no additional taggedupdatesshown up to the latest push date (2026-05-01).
AI summary generated Today
Recent updates
v1.0.0-alpha.1
5 months agov1.0.0-alpha.1 makes a major refactor of iconv-lite around a new backend abstraction and switches decoding to use native TextDecoder. It also drops Node versions prior to 18 and removes the safe-buffer dependency, aligning behavior with modern runtime Buffer and web platform APIs.
BreakingFeaturesv0.7.2
5 months agov0.7.2 primarily addresses TypeScript typing issues for CommonJS consumers, correcting the way iconv-lite exports are represented in the published .d.ts files. It also contains CI workflow maintenance (bumping GitHub Actions versions) and a packaging change to use the package.json files field instead of .npmignore.
v0.7.1
5 months agov0.7.1 is primarily a TypeScript typings update for iconv-lite, with “missing APIs” added to the public type surface. The release notes also include CI workflow updates that bump several GitHub Actions versions.
Featuresv0.7.0
9 months agov0.7.0 focuses on correctness improvements in encoding/decoding, especially around UTF-8 streaming edge cases and the encoding lookup logic. It also clarifies that decode() accepts Uint8Array input, and makes a small change related to StringDecoder.end behavior (removing a compatibility check).
BreakingFeatures