Switching Node Versions without Admin Privileges

Posted on August 15, 2025

I've been using NVM Windows for a long time to easily switch Node versions for working with different apps. With NVM Windows it requires admin access to adjust the Windows environment for Node. However, my new corporate laptop policies got stricter with admin rights, and so I'm not able to just quickly elevate to admin to switch my node version anymore.

The solution I ended up using involved NVM sh and the Git Bash shell. I was able to install Git for Windows without admin, so that's what I went with. WSL also should work if you have that installed.

The Installing and Updating steps were quite simpler. Here's what I had to do:

Run the install script in Git Bash:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.3/install.sh | bash

Add this command to ~/.bashrc:

export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

Reload your terminal or run source ~/.bashrc and nvm commands should be accessible now:

nvm install 20
nvm use 20

The main limitation is that you'll need to continue using Git Bash for all your node or npm commands going forward.