It looks like npm-check-updates is the only way to make this happen now.

npm i -g npm-check-updates
ncu -u
npm install

On npm <3.11:

Simply change every dependency's version to *, then run npm update --save. (Note: broken in recent (3.11) versions of npm).

Before:

  "dependencies": {
    "express": "*",
    "mongodb": "*",
    "underscore": "*",
    "rjs": "*",
    "jade": "*",
    "async": "*"
  }

After:

  "dependencies": {
    "express": "~3.2.0",
    "mongodb": "~1.2.14",
    "underscore": "~1.4.4",
    "rjs": "~2.10.0",
    "jade": "~0.29.0",
    "async": "~0.2.7"
  }

Of course, this is the blunt hammer of updating dependencies. It's fine if—as you said—the project is empty and nothing can break.

On the other hand, if you're working in a more mature project, you probably want to verify that there are no breaking changes in your dependencies before upgrading.

To see which modules are outdated, just run npm outdated. It will list any installed dependencies that have newer versions available.

For Yarn specific solution, refer to this Stack Overflow answer.

npm-check-updates is a utility that automatically adjusts a package.json with the latest version of all dependencies

see https://www.npmjs.org/package/npm-check-updates

$ npm install -g npm-check-updates
$ ncu -u
$ npm install 

[EDIT] A slightly less intrusive (avoids a global install) way of doing this if you have a modern version of npm is:

$ npx npm-check-updates -u
$ npm install 

Updated for npm v2+

npm 2+ (Node 0.12+):

npm outdated
npm update
git commit package-lock.json

Ancient npm (circa 2014):

npm install -g npm-check-updates
npm-check-updates
npm shrinkwrap
git commit package-lock.json

Be sure to shrinkwrap your deps, or you may wind up with a dead project. I pulled out a project the other day and it wouldn't run because my deps were all out of date/updated/a mess. If I'd shrinkwrapped, npm would have installed exactly what I needed.

Details

For the curious who make it this far, here is what I recommend:

Use npm-check-updates or npm outdated to suggest the latest versions.

# `outdated` is part of newer npm versions (2+)
$ npm outdated
# If you agree, update.  
$ npm update

#       OR

# Install and use the `npm-check-updates` package.
$ npm install -g npm-check-updates
# Then check your project
$ npm-check-updates
# If you agree, update package.json.
$ npm-check-updates -u

Then do a clean install (w/o the rm I got some dependency warnings)

$ rm -rf node_modules
$ npm install 

Lastly, save exact versions to npm-shrinkwrap.json with npm shrinkwrap

$ rm npm-shrinkwrap.json
$ npm shrinkwrap

Now, npm install will now use exact versions in npm-shrinkwrap.json

If you check npm-shrinkwrap.json into git, all installs will use the exact same versions.

This is a way to transition out of development (all updates, all the time) to production (nobody touch nothing).

• npm outdated

• npm-check-updates

• npm shrinkwrap

p.s. Yarn is sending your package list to Facebook.

To update one dependency to its lastest version without having to manually open the package.json and change it, you can run

npm install {package-name}@* {save flags?}

i.e.

npm install express@* --save

This flow is compatible with workspaces, i.e.

npm --workspace some/package install express@*

For reference, npm-install

Note: Some npm versions may need latest flag instead, i.e. npm install express@latest

As noted by user Vespakoen on a rejected edit, it's also possible to update multiple packages at once this way:

npm install --save package-nave@* other-package@* whatever-thing@*

He also apports a one-liner for the shell based on npm outdated. See the edit for code and explanation.

PS: I also hate having to manually edit package.json for things like that ;)

If you happen to be using Visual Studio Code as your IDE, this is a fun little extension to make updating package.json a one click process.

_{note: After updating packages in package.json file, run npm update to install the new versions.}

Version Lens

GitLab Repo

This works as of npm 1.3.15.

"dependencies": {
  "foo": "latest"
}

1. Use * as the version for the latest releases, including unstable
2. Use latest as version definition for the latest stable version
3. Modify the package.json with exactly the latest stable version number using LatestStablePackages

Here is an example:

"dependencies": {
        "express": "latest"  // using the latest STABLE version
    ,   "node-gyp": "latest"    
    ,   "jade": "latest"
    ,   "mongoose": "*" // using the newest version, may involve the unstable releases
    ,   "cookie-parser": "latest"
    ,   "express-session": "latest"
    ,   "body-parser": "latest"
    ,   "nodemailer":"latest"
    ,   "validator": "latest"
    ,   "bcrypt": "latest"
    ,   "formidable": "latest"
    ,   "path": "latest"
    ,   "fs-extra": "latest"
    ,   "moment": "latest"
    ,   "express-device": "latest"
},

To see which packages have newer versions available, then use the following command:

npm outdated

to update just one dependency just use the following command:

npm install yourPackage@latest

For example:

My package.json file has dependency:

"@progress/kendo-angular-dateinputs": "^1.3.1",

then I should write:

npm install @progress/kendo-angular-dateinputs@latest

What does --save-dev mean?

npm install @progress/kendo-angular-dateinputs@latest --save-dev

As npm install docs says:

-D, --save-dev: Package will appear in your devDependencies.

I really like how npm-upgrade works. It is a simple command line utility that goes through all of your dependencies and lets you see the current version compared to the latest version and update if you want.

Here is a screenshot of what happens after running npm-upgrade in the root of your project (next to the package.json file):

For each dependency you can choose to upgrade, ignore, view the changelog, or finish the process. It has worked great for me so far.

To be clear this is a third party package that needs to be installed before the command will work. It does not come with npm itself:

npm install -g npm-upgrade

Then from the root of a project that has a package.json file:

npm-upgrade

The only caveat I have found with the best answer above is that it updates the modules to the latest version. This means it could update to an unstable alpha build.

I would use that npm-check-updates utility. My group used this tool and it worked effectively by installing the stable updates.

As Etienne stated above: install and run with this:

$ npm install -g npm-check-updates
$ npm-check-updates -u
$ npm install 

I use npm-check to achieve this.

npm i -g npm npm-check
npm-check -ug # To update globals
npm-check -u # To update locals

Another useful command list which will keep exact version numbers in package.json:

npm cache clean
rm -rf node_modules/
npm i -g npm npm-check-updates
ncu -g # Update globals
ncu -u # Update locals
npm I

You can use yarn upgrade-interactive --latest if you are using Yarn.

Safe update

1. Use npm outdated to discover dependencies that are out of date.

2. Use npm update to perform safe dependency upgrades.

3. Use npm install <packagename>@latest to upgrade to the latest major version of a package.

Breaking Update

1. Use npx npm-check-updates -u.

2. npm install to upgrade all dependencies to their latest major versions.

Here is a basic regex to match semantic version numbers so you can quickly replace them all with an asterisk.

Semantic Version Regex

([>|<|=|~|^|\s])*?(\d+\.)?(\d+\.)?(\*|\d+)

How to use

Select the package versions you want to replace in the JSON file.

Input the regex above and verify it's matching the correct text.

Replace all matches with an asterisk.

Run npm update --save

If you want to use a gentle approach via a beautiful (for terminal) interactive reporting interface I would suggest using npm-check.

It's less of a hammer and gives you more consequential knowledge of, and control over, your dependency updates.

To give you a taste of what awaits here's a screenshot (scraped from the git page for npm-check):

As of npm version 5.2.0, there is a way to run this in a single line without installing any additional packages to your global npm registry nor locally to your application. This can be done by leveraging the new npx utility that's bundled with npm. (Click here to learn more.)

Run the following command in the root of your project:

npx npm-check-updates -u && npm i

This feature has been introduced in npm v5. Update to npm using npm install -g npm@latest and to update package.json:

1. delete folder node_modules and package-lock.json (if you have any)

2. run npm update. This will update the dependencies in package.json to the latest, based on semantic versioning.

To update to the very latest version, you can go with npm-check-updates.

I recently had to update several projects that were using npm and package.json for their gruntfile.js magic. The following bash command (multiline command) worked well for me:

npm outdated --json --depth=0 | \
jq --ascii-output --monochrome-output '. | keys | .[]' | \
xargs npm install $1 --save-dev

The idea here: To pipe the npm outdated output as json, to jq
(jq is a json command line parser/query tool)
(notice the use of --depth argument for npm outdated)
jq will strip the output down to just the top level package name only.
finally xargs puts each LIBRARYNAME one at a time into a npm install LIBRARYNAME --save-dev command

The above is what worked for me on a machine runnning: node=v0.11.10 osx=10.9.2 npm=1.3.24

this required:
xargs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xargs (native to my machine I believe)
and
jq http://stedolan.github.io/jq/ (I installed it with brew install jq)

Note: I only save the updated libraries to package.json inside of the json key devDependancies by using --save-dev, that was a requirement of my projects, quite possible not yours.

Afterward I check that everything is gravy with a simple

npm outdated --depth=0

Also, you can check the current toplevel installed library versions with

npm list --depth=0

If you use Yarn, the following command updates all packages to their latest version:

yarn upgrade --latest

From their documentation:

The upgrade --latest command upgrades packages the same as the upgrade command, but ignores the version range specified in package.json. Instead, the version specified by the latest tag will be used (potentially upgrading the packages across major versions).

Use Updtr!

Based on npm outdated, updtr installs the latest version and runs npm test for each dependency. If the test succeeds, updtr saves the new version number to your package.json. If the test fails, however, updtr rolls back its changes.

If you are using yarn, yarn upgrade-interactive is a really sleek tool that can allow you to view your outdated dependencies and then select which ones you want to update.

More reasons to use Yarn over npm. Heh.

Commands that I had to use to update package.json for NPM 3.10.10:

npm install -g npm-check-updates
ncu -a
npm install

Background:

I was using the latest command from @josh3736 but my package.json was not updated. I then noticed the description text when running npm-check-updates -u:

The following dependency is satisfied by its declared version range, but the installed version is behind. You can install the latest version without modifying your package file by using npm update. If you want to update the dependency in your package file anyway, run ncu -a.

Reading the documentation for npm-check-updates you can see the difference:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/npm-check-updates

-u, --upgrade: overwrite package file

-a, --upgradeAll: include even those dependencies whose latest version satisfies the declared semver dependency

ncu is an alias for npm-check-updates as seen in the message when typing npm-check-updates -u:

[INFO]: You can also use ncu as an alias

If you don't want to install global npm-check-updates you can simply run that:

node -e "const pk = JSON.parse(require('fs').readFileSync('package.json', 'utf-8'));require('child_process').spawn('npm', ['install', ...Object.keys(Object.assign({},pk.dependencies, pk.devDependencies)).map(a=>a+'@latest')]).stdout.on('data', d=>console.log(d.toString()))"

If you're looking for an easier solution that doesn't involve installing npm packages, I'd checkout updatepackagejson.com

As it's almost been 10 years since the original question, and many of the answers are either outdated or not recommended.

I would use something which is package manager-agnostic, i.e., can work with npm, pnpm, Yarn or others.

Lately I have been using taze.

You can either add it to your development dependencies and run from there or run without installation with npx taze or pnpx taze, etc.

I solved this by using the instructions from npm-check-updates:

npm install -g npm-check-updates
ncu
ncu -u # To update all the dependencies to the latest
ncu -u "specific module name"  # In case you want to update specific dependencies to the latest

The above commands are unsafe because you might break your module when switching versions. Instead I recommend the following

• Set actual current node modules version into package.json using npm shrinkwrap command.
• Update each dependency to the latest version IF IT DOES NOT BREAK YOUR TESTS using https://github.com/bahmutov/next-update command line tool

npm install -g next-update
// from your package
next-update

I found another solution for recent versions of NPM. I want to replace all the "*" dependencies with the explicit latest version number. None of the methods discussed has worked for me.

I did:

1. Replace all "*" with "^0.0.0"
2. Run npm-check-updates -u

Everything in package.json now is updated to the last version.

Try the following command if you are using npm 5 and Node.js 8:

npm update --save

The following code (which was accepted) wrote me something like "it takes too long blah-blah" and did nothing. Probably using the global flag was the problem, idk.

npm i -g npm-check-updates
ncu -u
npm install

I decided to use my text editor and follow a semi-manual approach instead.

I copied a list like this (just a lot longer) from the dev dependencies of my package.json to the notepad++ text editor:

"browserify": "10.2.6",
"expect.js": "^0.3.1",
"karma": "^0.13.22",
"karma-browserify": "^5.2.0",

I set the search mode to regular expression, used the ^\s*"([^"]+)".*$ pattern to get the package name and replaced it with npm uninstall \1 --save-dev \nnpm install \1 --save-dev. Clicked on "replace all". The otput was this:

npm uninstall browserify --save-dev 
npm install browserify --save-dev
npm uninstall expect.js --save-dev 
npm install expect.js --save-dev
npm uninstall karma --save-dev 
npm install karma --save-dev
npm uninstall karma-browserify --save-dev 
npm install karma-browserify --save-dev

I copied it back to bash and hit enter. Everything was upgraded and working fine. That's all.

"browserify": "^16.1.0",
"expect.js": "^0.3.1",
"karma": "^2.0.0",
"karma-browserify": "^5.2.0",

I don't think it is a big deal, since you have to do it only every now and then, but you can easily write a script, which parses the package.json and upgrades your packages. I think it is better this way, because you can edit your list if you need something special, for example keeping the current version of a lib.

It's wild to me that 90% of answers is some variant of "use npm-check-updates". Here's what I do (relevant code):

{
  "devDependencies": {
    "updates": "^13.0.5" // the version here could be "latest" or "*" tbh...
  },
  "scripts": {
    "test:dependencies": "updates --update ./",
  }
}

Running npm run test:dependencies (or whatever your dependency update script is called) will check your package.json for the latest versions of every package listed, and it'll let you know when the latest version was published. Run npm i after that and you'll be up to date!

Also, unlike npm-check-updates, updates has zero dependencies (ncu has 29, at the time of this post).