Setting Up a Go Project with Air for Live Reload

The Problem

During Go development, you constantly edit code, stop the server, rebuild, and restart. This cycle breaks your flow.

Air watches your files and automatically rebuilds and restarts your application on changes.

Installation

go install github.com/air-verse/air@latest

Make sure $GOPATH/bin is in your PATH.

Configuration

Create a .air.toml in your project root:

root = "."
tmp_dir = "tmp"

[build]
  cmd = "go build -o ./tmp/main ."
  bin = "./tmp/main"
  delay = 1000
  include_ext = ["go", "html", "css", "js"]
  exclude_dir = ["tmp", "vendor", "node_modules"]

[screen]
  clear_on_rebuild = true

[log]
  time = true

Usage

Simply run air in your project directory:

$ air

  __    _   ___
 / /\  | | | |_)
/_/--\ |_| |_| \_ v1.51.0

watching .
building...
running...

Now every time you save a .go file, Air will rebuild and restart your server automatically.

Project Structure

A typical project setup with Air looks like:

myapp/
├── .air.toml
├── cmd/
│   └── server/
│       └── main.go
├── internal/
│   ├── handler/
│   └── service/
├── go.mod
└── go.sum

Tips

• Add tmp/ to your .gitignore
• Use --build.cmd flag to override the build command
• Combine with make for more complex build steps

Air is a small tool that makes a big difference in your daily Go development workflow.