By Bhanu Gill in n8n — 10 Dec 2025

How I Successfully Updated n8n on My Mac and Linux Server

I use n8n for several automation tasks, and recently I needed to update it both on my Mac (running with Docker) and on my Linux server (running with PM2).

Here’s the full process I followed, written simply and clearly.

Updating n8n on macOS (Docker)

My local n8n runs in a Docker container, so updating it is mostly about pulling the new image.

Stop and remove the old container

docker stop n8n
docker rm n8n

Download the latest n8n image

docker pull n8nio/n8n:latest

Start it again with the same volume

docker run -it --name n8n -p 5678:5678 \
  -v ~/.n8n:/home/node/.n8n \
  n8nio/n8n:latest

All flows and credentials remained safe because they live in the ~/.n8n folder, not inside the container.

Updating n8n on a Linux Server (PM2)

On my server, n8n wasn’t running inside Docker.

It was installed globally with npm and managed by PM2. The data lived in:

/home/<username>/.n8n

This folder contains workflows, credentials, and settings.

Stop the n8n process

pm2 stop ecosystem.config.js

Update n8n

npm install -g n8n@latest

Restart n8n

pm2 restart ecosystem.config.js

Confirm the version

n8n --version

After updating, mine showed:

[Latest Version]

Checking Node and PM2 Versions

It’s helpful to verify that Node.js and PM2 are also on supported versions:

node -v
pm2 -v

My setup was:

Node.js 20
PM2 6.0.13

Both work well with the latest n8n releases.

Optional Updates

These aren’t required but can be done if needed:

Update npm:

npm install -g npm@latest

Update PM2:

npm install -g pm2@latest
pm2 update