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 3.10 - 3.15.

pip install watchfiles

Binaries are available for most architectures on Linux, MacOS and Windows (learn more).

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