Simple, modern and high performance file watching and code reload in python.

Documentation: watchfiles.helpmanual.io

Source Code: github.com/samuelcolvin/watchfiles

Underlying file system notifications are handled by the Notify rust library.

This package was previously named "watchgod", see the migration guide for more information.

watchfiles requires Python 3.8 - 3.13.

pip install watchfiles

Binaries are available for:

• Linux: x86_64, aarch64, i686, armv7l, musl-x86_64 & musl-aarch64
• MacOS: x86_64 & arm64
• Windows: amd64 & win32

Otherwise, you can install from source which requires Rust stable to be installed.

Here are some examples of what watchfiles can do:

from watchfiles import watch

for changes in watch('./path/to/dir'):
    print(changes)

See watch docs for more details.

import asyncio
from watchfiles import awatch

async def main():
    async for changes in awatch('/path/to/dir'):
        print(changes)

asyncio.run(main())

See awatch docs for more details.

from watchfiles import run_process

def foobar(a, b, c):
    ...

if __name__ == '__main__':
    run_process('./path/to/dir', target=foobar, args=(1, 2, 3))

See run_process docs for more details.

import asyncio
from watchfiles import arun_process

def foobar(a, b, c):
    ...

async def main():
    await arun_process('./path/to/dir', target=foobar, args=(1, 2, 3))

if __name__ == '__main__':
    asyncio.run(main())

See arun_process docs for more details.

watchfiles also comes with a CLI for running and reloading code. To run some command when files in src change:

watchfiles "some command" src

For more information, see the CLI docs.

Or run

watchfiles --help