If you use server rendering, keep in mind that neither useLayoutEffect
nor useEffect
can run until the JavaScript is downloaded.
You might see a warning if you try to useLayoutEffect
on the server. Here's two common ways to fix it.
If this effect isn't important for first render (i.e. if the UI still looks valid before it runs), then useEffect
instead.
function MyComponent() {
useEffect(() => {
// ...
});
}
Like useLayoutEffect
, it won't run on the server, but it also won't warn.
If UI looks broken with useEffect
but gets fixed by useLayoutEffect
, it means that this component doesn't look right until the effect runs. However, that means the server-rendered HTML version of it won't look right until JavaScript loads anyway. So server-rendering it brings no benefit and shows a confusing UI.
To fix this, you can delay showing that component until after the client side JS loads and hydrates the component. To exclude a Child
that needs layout effects from the server-rendered HTML, you can render it conditionally:
function Parent() {
const [showChild, setShowChild] = useState(false);
// Wait until after client-side hydration to show
useEffect(() => {
setShowChild(true);
}, []);
if (!showChild) {
// You can show some kind of placeholder UI here
return null;
}
return <Child {...props} />;
}
function Child(props) {
useLayoutEffect(() => {
// This is where your layout effect logic can be
});
}
For example, this is handy for jQuery plugins which can be initialized later.
If you have some use case that isn't covered, please report a complete minimal code example here and we'll try to help.
The problem with some of the solutions here is they require changing your actual code. You have to replace all your
useLayoutEffect
calls with a customuseBrowserLayoutEffect
βor worse, wrap them all inif
statements! which is specifically forbidden. Youβre kludging perfectly correct code throughout your codebase, for the sole purpose of suppressing a bogus console warning.And if the offending code is in an imported module, you can't kludge it.
This solution is one line at the top level of your project and youβre done. Note that it changes nothing thatβs actually executed. It replaces a function that never runs with a function that does nothing.
On the server side,
useLayoutEffect
is never executed but generates a warning. To suppress the warning, replace the never-executed function with noop. On the client side, this replacement doesn't happen, and all your plain olduseLayoutEffect
s run normally, unkludged and unconditional the way God intended.