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18.0.0 (March 29, 2022)
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@acdlite acdlite released this 29 Mar 17:22
· 4799 commits to main since this release
v18.0.0
34aa5cf

Below is a list of all new features, APIs, deprecations, and breaking changes.
Read React 18 release post and React 18 upgrade guide for more information.

New Features

React

  • useId is a new hook for generating unique IDs on both the client and server, while avoiding hydration mismatches. It is primarily useful for component libraries integrating with accessibility APIs that require unique IDs. This solves an issue that already exists in React 17 and below, but it’s even more important in React 18 because of how the new streaming server renderer delivers HTML out-of-order.
  • startTransition and useTransition let you mark some state updates as not urgent. Other state updates are considered urgent by default. React will allow urgent state updates (for example, updating a text input) to interrupt non-urgent state updates (for example, rendering a list of search results).
  • useDeferredValue lets you defer re-rendering a non-urgent part of the tree. It is similar to debouncing, but has a few advantages compared to it. There is no fixed time delay, so React will attempt the deferred render right after the first render is reflected on the screen. The deferred render is interruptible and doesn't block user input.
  • useSyncExternalStore is a new hook that allows external stores to support concurrent reads by forcing updates to the store to be synchronous. It removes the need for useEffect when implementing subscriptions to external data sources, and is recommended for any library that integrates with state external to React.
  • useInsertionEffect is a new hook that allows CSS-in-JS libraries to address performance issues of injecting styles in render. Unless you’ve already built a CSS-in-JS library we don’t expect you to ever use this. This hook will run after the DOM is mutated, but before layout effects read the new layout. This solves an issue that already exists in React 17 and below, but is even more important in React 18 because React yields to the browser during concurrent rendering, giving it a chance to recalculate layout.

React DOM Client

These new APIs are now exported from react-dom/client:

  • createRoot: New method to create a root to render or unmount. Use it instead of ReactDOM.render. New features in React 18 don't work without it.
  • hydrateRoot: New method to hydrate a server rendered application. Use it instead of ReactDOM.hydrate in conjunction with the new React DOM Server APIs. New features in React 18 don't work without it.

Both createRoot and hydrateRoot accept a new option called onRecoverableError in case you want to be notified when React recovers from errors during rendering or hydration for logging. By default, React will use reportError, or console.error in the older browsers.

React DOM Server

These new APIs are now exported from react-dom/server and have full support for streaming Suspense on the server:

  • renderToPipeableStream: for streaming in Node environments.
  • renderToReadableStream: for modern edge runtime environments, such as Deno and Cloudflare workers.

The existing renderToString method keeps working but is discouraged.

Deprecations

  • react-dom: ReactDOM.render has been deprecated. Using it will warn and run your app in React 17 mode.
  • react-dom: ReactDOM.hydrate has been deprecated. Using it will warn and run your app in React 17 mode.
  • react-dom: ReactDOM.unmountComponentAtNode has been deprecated.
  • react-dom: ReactDOM.renderSubtreeIntoContainer has been deprecated.
  • react-dom/server: ReactDOMServer.renderToNodeStream has been deprecated.

Breaking Changes

React

  • Automatic batching: This release introduces a performance improvement that changes to the way React batches updates to do more batching automatically. See Automatic batching for fewer renders in React 18 for more info. In the rare case that you need to opt out, wrap the state update in flushSync.
  • Stricter Strict Mode: In the future, React will provide a feature that lets components preserve state between unmounts. To prepare for it, React 18 introduces a new development-only check to Strict Mode. React will automatically unmount and remount every component, whenever a component mounts for the first time, restoring the previous state on the second mount. If this breaks your app, consider removing Strict Mode until you can fix the components to be resilient to remounting with existing state.
  • Consistent useEffect timing: React now always synchronously flushes effect functions if the update was triggered during a discrete user input event such as a click or a keydown event. Previously, the behavior wasn't always predictable or consistent.
  • Stricter hydration errors: Hydration mismatches due to missing or extra text content are now treated like errors instead of warnings. React will no longer attempt to "patch up" individual nodes by inserting or deleting a node on the client in an attempt to match the server markup, and will revert to client rendering up to the closest <Suspense> boundary in the tree. This ensures the hydrated tree is consistent and avoids potential privacy and security holes that can be caused by hydration mismatches.
  • Suspense trees are always consistent: If a component suspends before it's fully added to the tree, React will not add it to the tree in an incomplete state or fire its effects. Instead, React will throw away the new tree completely, wait for the asynchronous operation to finish, and then retry rendering again from scratch. React will render the retry attempt concurrently, and without blocking the browser.
  • Layout Effects with Suspense: When a tree re-suspends and reverts to a fallback, React will now clean up layout effects, and then re-create them when the content inside the boundary is shown again. This fixes an issue which prevented component libraries from correctly measuring layout when used with Suspense.
  • New JS Environment Requirements: React now depends on modern browsers features including Promise, Symbol, and Object.assign. If you support older browsers and devices such as Internet Explorer which do not provide modern browser features natively or have non-compliant implementations, consider including a global polyfill in your bundled application.

Scheduler (Experimental)

  • Remove unstable scheduler/tracing API

Notable Changes

React

  • Components can now render undefined: React no longer throws if you return undefined from a component. This makes the allowed component return values consistent with values that are allowed in the middle of a component tree. We suggest to use a linter to prevent mistakes like forgetting a return statement before JSX.
  • In tests, act warnings are now opt-in: If you're running end-to-end tests, the act warnings are unnecessary. We've introduced an opt-in mechanism so you can enable them only for unit tests where they are useful and beneficial.
  • No warning about setState on unmounted components: Previously, React warned about memory leaks when you call setState on an unmounted component. This warning was added for subscriptions, but people primarily run into it in scenarios where setting state is fine, and workarounds make the code worse. We've removed this warning.
  • No suppression of console logs: When you use Strict Mode, React renders each component twice to help you find unexpected side effects. In React 17, we've suppressed console logs for one of the two renders to make the logs easier to read. In response to community feedback about this being confusing, we've removed the suppression. Instead, if you have React DevTools installed, the second log's renders will be displayed in grey, and there will be an option (off by default) to suppress them completely.
  • Improved memory usage: React now cleans up more internal fields on unmount, making the impact from unfixed memory leaks that may exist in your application code less severe.

React DOM Server

  • renderToString: Will no longer error when suspending on the server. Instead, it will emit the fallback HTML for the closest <Suspense> boundary and then retry rendering the same content on the client. It is still recommended that you switch to a streaming API like renderToPipeableStream or renderToReadableStream instead.
  • renderToStaticMarkup: Will no longer error when suspending on the server. Instead, it will emit the fallback HTML for the closest <Suspense> boundary and retry rendering on the client.

All Changes

React

React DOM

React DOM Server

React DOM Test Utils

  • Throw when act is used in production. (#21686 by @acdlite)
  • Support disabling spurious act warnings with global.IS_REACT_ACT_ENVIRONMENT. (#22561 by @acdlite)
  • Expand act warning to cover all APIs that might schedule React work. (#22607 by @acdlite)
  • Make act batch updates. (#21797 by @acdlite)
  • Remove warning for dangling passive effects. (#22609 by @acdlite)

React Refresh

Server Components (Experimental)

Scheduler (Experimental)

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