Choosing between Eleventy `--serve` and `--watch` for reliable live‑reload on Windows with VS Code atomic‑save

Use eleventy --serve; --watch cannot reload the browser

To get an automatic browser refresh after saving a template, run eleventy --serve. This starts Eleventy's development server with BrowserSync, which injects a live-reload client into the pages it serves. eleventy --watch only runs the build and writes files to the output directory; it never instructs the browser to reload. If you need immediate visual verification, --watch is not sufficient on any platform.

What is confirmed vs. what is likely

Confirmed: --serve is the built-in mode that provides local serving plus live reload without an external proxy. --watch is a build-only watcher.

Likely explanation for missed reloads on Windows: VS Code's atomic save writes a temporary file and renames it over the original. On Windows file systems, some native watchers interpret that rename as a delete-and-create pair or miss it entirely. Eleventy's internal watcher may not trigger a rebuild, so --serve has nothing new to push to the browser.

Steps for this case

1. Run npx @11ty/eleventy --serve and open the local URL from the terminal.
2. Save a template in VS Code and watch the terminal output.
3. If the terminal logs a rebuild but the browser does not refresh, the watcher is working; investigate the BrowserSync connection or the page's script injection.
4. If the terminal logs no rebuild, the watcher missed the atomic-save rename. Either disable atomic save in VS Code or, if your Eleventy version exposes Chokidar watch options, enable polling.

Disabling atomic save in VS Code

Open your VS Code settings.json and set:

{
  "files.atomicSave": false
}

This forces a direct write to the target file, which native file-system watchers generally handle more reliably on Windows.

One diagnostic that changes the recommendation

Does Eleventy log a rebuild in the terminal immediately after the save? If yes, the problem is not the choice between --serve and --watch; it is the reload channel. If no, the watcher is missing the save event and you should adjust the save behavior or polling before relying on either command.