Method 1 - Homebrew

These installation/upgrade/uninstallation steps are follow http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/install-node-js-npm-mac

$ brew install node
$ brew install node@16

$ node -v
v8.1.4
$ npm -v
5.0.3

Upgrade npm

$ npm i -g npm

$ npm -v
5.3.0

Upgrade nodejs

Check if the nodejs is install from brew

$ brew ls node

Start to upgrade

$ brew update
$ brew upgrade node

Upgrade nodejs to specific version

$ brew unlink node
$ brew install node@12
$ brew link node@12

Downgrade from v16 to v14

$ brew unlink node
$ brew install node@14
$ brew link node@14

Uninstall

$ brew uninstall node

If failed with this error, you have to uninstall yarn first.

$ brew uninstall node
Error: Refusing to uninstall /usr/local/Cellar/node/13.5.0
because it is required by yarn, which is currently installed.
You can override this and force removal with:
  brew uninstall --ignore-dependencies node

Follow the steps in yarn to uninstall yarn first.

$ brew uninstall node
Uninstalling /usr/local/Cellar/node/13.5.0... (4,663 files, 59.1MB)

But you may find that there are multiple versions of node installed by Homebrew.

➜  ~ ls /usr/local/Cellar/node*
/usr/local/Cellar/node@10:
10.16.0

/usr/local/Cellar/node@12:
12.14.0

Follow the instruction in the Homebrew FAQ, you have to force uninstall node.

$ brew uninstall --force node

But still can see the files

$ ls /usr/local/Cellar/node*
/usr/local/Cellar/node@10:
10.16.0

/usr/local/Cellar/node@12:
12.14.0

Follow the anwser to brew: how to delete outdated version of package. I found the node@10 or node@12 in the result.

$ brew cleanup

It seems that both node@10 and node@12 is unlicked. So I just follow the steps in https://stackoverflow.com/a/32904423 to remove each version of node.

$ brew uninstall node@10
Uninstalling /usr/local/Cellar/node@10/10.16.0... (4,159 files, 52.9MB)
$ brew uninstall node@12
Uninstalling /usr/local/Cellar/node@12/12.14.0... (4,308 files, 57.7MB)
$ ls /usr/local/Cellar/node*
zsh: no matches found: /usr/local/Cellar/node*

Check that the node is fullly uninstalled.

$ brew ls node
Error: No such keg: /usr/local/Cellar/node

Method 2 - *.pkg

https://nodejs.org

.pkg installer

https://nodesource.com/blog/installing-nodejs-tutorial-mac-os-x/

Uninstall

https://gist.github.com/TonyMtz/d75101d9bdf764c890ef

但是需要把第一行改成

$ lsbom -f -l -s -pf /var/db/receipts/org.nodejs.node.pkg.bom | while read f; do sudo rm /usr/local/${f}; done

https://github.com/nodejs/help/issues/35

或者直接使用这个脚本：https://gist.github.com/nicerobot/2697848 测试发现 curl 直接运行不成功，需要复制到uninstall-node.sh，然后在本地运行才可以。

Method 3 - NVM

Follow the installation steps in NVM

Be sure to uninstall the node installed by homebrew or *.pkg file, according to this issue https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/issues/1918

See also