samuelcolvin/watchfiles

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

2529 stars · 141 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

watchfiles is a Python library providing simple, high-performance file watching and code reload, built on the Rust Notify library. It offers sync and async watch APIs, process restart utilities, and a CLI for running commands on file changes.

Use cases

• watch a directory for file changes in python
• auto-reload python code when files change
• run a command whenever files in a folder change
• async file watching with asyncio
• restart a dev server on file save
• monitor filesystem changes cross-platform

When to choose

• you need fast, reliable file system notifications in Python
• you want automatic code reload during development
• you need both sync and asyncio watching APIs
• you want a batteries-included CLI for watch-and-run workflows

When to avoid

• you need file watching in a non-Python language
• you only need a one-time directory diff rather than live watching
• you cannot install binary wheels and lack a Rust toolchain

Facets

library · maturity stable

developer-tools cli concurrency developer-tools python windows cross-platform cli file-watching code-reload hot-reload rust asyncio inotify filesystem-notifications command-line automation linux macos

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="samuelcolvin/watchfiles")