Watch Tasks

If you set watch: true to a task, it will only run from the CLI via task <task-name>, but if you call it from another task either directly or as a dependency, it will not run in watch mode. This is because the watch mode is designed for interactive use, not for automated task execution.

Watch tasks in Taskfile allow you to automatically run tasks when files change. This is particularly useful for development workflows where you want to rebuild or recompile your code whenever a file is modified. There are two ways to define watch tasks:

--watch or -w flag in the command line
watch: true field in the Taskfile

The default watch interval is 100 milliseconds, but you can change the interval by setting interval: 200ms in the root of the Taskfile or passing --interval 200ms flag in the command line.

Taskfile.yaml


version: '3'
interval: 200ms
tasks:
  dev:
    watch: true
    sources:
      - 'test.txt'
      - '**/*.py'
    cmds:
      - echo "File changed, running task..."
      - echo "Rebuilding project..."