Target

The target setting determines which JavaScript and CSS features are downleveled (transformed to older syntax) and which are left intact in the output. This allows you to control the compatibility of your bundled code with specific environments or JavaScript versions.

For example, an arrow function () => this will be transformed into an equivalent function expression if the target is es5 or lower.

Syntax Downgrade Only

The target option only affects syntax transformations. It does not include runtime polyfills or shims for APIs that may not exist in the target environment. For example, if your code uses Promise, it will not be polyfilled for environments that lack native Promise support.

Default Target Behavior

By default, tsdown will read the engines.node field from your package.json and automatically set the target to the minimum compatible Node.js version specified. This ensures your output is compatible with the environments you declare for your package.

For example, if your package.json contains:

{
  "engines": {
    "node": ">=18.0.0"
  }
}

Then tsdown will automatically set the target to node18.0.0.

If you want to override this behavior, you can specify the target explicitly using the CLI or configuration file.

Disabling Target Transformations

You can disable all syntax transformations by setting the target to false. This will preserve modern JavaScript and CSS syntax in the output, regardless of the environment specified in your package.json.

{
  "target": false
}

When target is set to false:

• No JavaScript syntax downleveling occurs (modern features like optional chaining ?., nullish coalescing ??, etc. are preserved)
• No CSS syntax transformations are applied (modern CSS features like nesting are preserved)
• No runtime helper plugins are loaded
• The output will use the exact syntax from your source code

This is particularly useful when:

• You're targeting modern environments that support the latest JavaScript/CSS features
• You want to handle syntax transformations in a different build step
• You're building a library that will be further processed by the consuming application

No Target Resolution

If you don't specify a target and your package.json doesn't have an engines.node field, tsdown will behave as if target: false was set, preserving all modern syntax.

Customizing the Target

You can specify the target using the --target option:

tsdown --target <target>

Supported Targets

• ECMAScript versions: es5, es2015, es2020, esnext, etc.
• Browser versions: chrome100, safari18, firefox110, etc.
• Node.js versions: node20.18, node16, etc.

Example

tsdown --target es2020

You can also pass an array of targets to ensure compatibility across multiple environments:

tsdown --target chrome100 --target node20.18

CSS Targeting

tsdown can also downlevel CSS features to match your specified browser targets. For example, a CSS nesting & selector will be flattened if the target is chrome108 or lower.

To enable CSS downleveling, you need to manually install unplugin-lightningcss:

npm

npm install -D unplugin-lightningcss

pnpm

pnpm add -D unplugin-lightningcss

yarn

yarn add -D unplugin-lightningcss

bun

bun add -D unplugin-lightningcss

Once installed, simply set your browser target (for example, target: 'chrome100') in your configuration or CLI options, and CSS downleveling will be enabled automatically.

For more information on browser targets and CSS compatibility, refer to the Lightning CSS documentation.