deadport — a simple CLI to free blocked ports
I was getting tired of typing different commands every time a port got stuck during dev. Between lsof, netstat, finding the PID and then running kill, it kept breaking my flow — so I built a small tool to automate it.
$ deadport 3000
Port 3000 is held by:
PID NAME USER UPTIME COMMAND
48291 node alex 2h 14m node server.js
Kill this process? [Y/n] y
✓ Process 48291 terminated (SIGTERM, 47ms)
Quick comparison with what I was using before:
| Tool | Cross-platform | Interactive | Shows process info | Safe termination |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| lsof + kill | Mostly Unix | No | Partial | Manual |
| fuser | Linux only | No | Minimal | Manual |
| netstat | OS-dependent | No | Hard to read | Manual |
| deadport | macOS / Linux / Windows | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The project is still in beta but I already set up a multi-OS CI matrix with unit tests and e2e tests.
Mostly looking for feedback on Windows, feature ideas, or weird edge cases where it could break.
Install: npm install -g deadport@beta
Repo: https://github.com/p1910081/deadport
> This software's code is partially AI-generated. I mainly use AI to speed up some parts of the work, but I handled the project architecture, technical decisions, reviews and testing myself. I also validated the behavior across multiple OSes to avoid sketchy process-handling bugs.