Minifiers

About

Minifying the JS code will make it faster for a browser to download and use, at the cost of becoming impractical for a human to read.

Here are some changes applied:

• Rename variables and functions to short names.
• Remove whitespace.
• Strips comments.
• Combines files.
• Tree shaking - remove unused code when importing a library.

Browser tools

Easy minification tools for those without build tool experience or for quick results. It lets you paste code and generate minified code.

• Minify JS on Minify Tools site.
• minifier.org

JS packages

Minify package

• npm
• coderaiser/minify) repo

Webpack build tool

• Webpack production guide

  • webpack v4+ will minify your code by default in production mode.

  • Uses the TerserPlugin by default

Terser toolkit

• terser.org

  • JavaScript parser, mangler and compressor toolkit for ES6+

  • Used by Webpack, Parcel, Angular and Next

Babel minify tool

Babel is a transpiler and has a babel-minify tool available to extend it. It can be used in Babel as a preset, or as a standalone tool.

• babel-minify on Babel homepage
• babel/minify repo

  ✂️ An ES6+ aware minifier based on the Babel toolchain (beta)

UglifierJS package

• lisperator.net/uglifyjs/

  UglifyJS is a JavaScript compressor/minifier written in JavaScript. It also contains tools that allow one to automate working with JavaScript code:

• mishoo/UglifyJS repo

  JavaScript parser / mangler / compressor / beautifier toolkit

ESBuild package

• esbuild.github.io/

  • An extremely fast JavaScript bundler

• Claims to be 10 to 100x faster than competing tools like Webpack and Terser.
• For usage and examples, see my ESBuild cheatsheet.

SWC package

• swc.rs

  • Super fast javascript / typescript compiler

• Feature summary

  • Transcompile - swc is a typescript / javascript compiler. It consumes a javascript or typescript file which uses recently added features like async-await and emits javascript code which can be executed on old browsers.

  • Super fast - It’s 20x faster than babel on single thread, and 70x faster on 4 core benchmark

  • Bundling - a super-fast javascript bundler with tree shaking