npm owner: Usage, Options & Common Errors

Manage who can publish a package.

npm owner manages the maintainer list of a published package - who is allowed to publish new versions and change package settings.

What it does

ls prints current owners; add grants a user publish rights; rm revokes them. Only an existing owner (or an org admin for scoped packages) can modify the list. For org-scoped packages, team access is usually managed via the org, not per-user owners.

Common usage

Terminal

npm owner ls my-pkg
npm owner add alice my-pkg
npm owner rm bob my-pkg

Common error: not an owner

npm owner add fails with a 403 because the authenticated token is not already an owner of the package. Run npm owner ls to confirm the current owners, then perform the change from an account that is already a maintainer (or via the org settings for scoped packages).

Terminal

npm owner ls my-pkg          # who can currently publish

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