TypeScript Configuration

Published: August 4, 2024
Last Modified: August 9, 2026

There are a lot of options to tweak TypeScript behavior.
These are the options that I have found very useful.

The below config is for node js projects.

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "declaration": true,
    "declarationMap": true,
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "module": "nodeNext",
    "noImplicitReturns": true,
    "noUncheckedIndexedAccess": true,
    "noUnusedParameters": true,
    "noUnusedLocals": true,
    "strict": true,
    "verbatimModuleSyntax": true
  }
}

Refer tsconfig for more details.

For target, refer below github repo for suggested bases for each node js version.
https://github.com/tsconfig/bases/tree/main/bases

Changes in TypeScript 7

TypeScript 7 — the native Go port, released July 2026 — makes two of the options above unnecessary.

strict is now true by default, so you only need the flag if you prefer stating it explicitly.

esModuleInterop and allowSyntheticDefaultImports can no longer be set to false. The behaviour is always on, so the flag no longer carries any meaning.

That leaves:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "declaration": true,
    "declarationMap": true,
    "module": "nodeNext",
    "noImplicitReturns": true,
    "noUncheckedIndexedAccess": true,
    "noUnusedParameters": true,
    "noUnusedLocals": true,
    "verbatimModuleSyntax": true
  }
}

Refer the TypeScript 7 announcement for more details.

#typescript