While installing tailwind CSS I am having this error 'npm error could not determine executable to run'

Question

I am trying to install the tailwind in react project but while creating tailwind.config.js file I am having this issue. This is the error I am facing

npx tailwindcss init -p
npm error could not determine executable to run
npm error A complete log of this run can be found in:
C:\Users\PMLS\AppData\Local\npm-cache\_logs\2025-03-06T15_42_53_449Z-debug-0.log

I have cleared the cache and deleted the node_modules folder and npm install too. I have installed the latest version of Node.js, too, but it still doesn't work.

Answer 1

Maybe you are using v4 of Tailwind, which does not use init, but this instead:

npm install tailwindcss @tailwindcss/vite

https://tailwindcss.com/docs/installation/using-vite

Version 3.4 uses this:

npm install -D tailwindcss@3
npx tailwindcss init

https://v3.tailwindcss.com/docs/installation

Answer 2

Tailwind released version 4 in January of 2025 and the installation has changed quite a bit from the older version 3.x. This error is caused by the conflict in how version 3.x and version 4.x are installed.

C:\Users\Olusola\Documents\Portfolios\inperson\frontend>npx tailwindcss init 
-p
npm error could not determine executable to run
npm error A complete log of this run can be found in: 
C:\Users\Olusola\AppData\Local\npm-cache\_logs\2025-04-02T03_40_54_327Z- 
debug-0.log

The command npx tailwindcss init -p works correctly for version 3.x. If you check the log file, you'll find leads as to what the issue might be. The most important lines are the following:

line 7 verbose title npm exec tailwindcss init -p
line 8 verbose argv "exec" "--" "tailwindcss" "init" "-p" 
line 14 verbose stack Error: could not determine executable to run
line 15 verbose pkgid [email protected]

Note that the initial command npm -D tailwindcss postcss autoprefixer always installs the latest version of tailwindcss in your devDependencies in the package.json file. In my case, it is:

"devDependencies": {
 ...
 "tailwindcss": "^4.1.0",
 }

SUMMARY: If you want to use version 3.x, use the following command:

npm install -D tailwindcss@3 postcss auto-prefixer
npx tailwindcss init -p 

If you want version 4.x, use this command instead:

npm install tailwindcss @tailwindcss/vite