<NavLink>

A <NavLink> is a special kind of <Link> that knows whether or not it is "active", "pending", or "transitioning". This is useful in a few different scenarios:

• When building a navigation menu, such as a breadcrumb or a set of tabs where you'd like to show which of them is currently selected
• It provides useful context for assistive technology like screen readers
• It provides a "transitioning" value to give you finer-grained control over View Transitions

import { NavLink } from "react-router-dom";

<NavLink
  to="/messages"
  className={({ isActive, isPending }) =>
    isPending ? "pending" : isActive ? "active" : ""
  }
>
  Messages
</NavLink>;

Default active class

By default, an active class is added to a <NavLink> component when it is active so you can use CSS to style it.

<nav id="sidebar">
  <NavLink to="/messages" />
</nav>

#sidebar a.active {
  color: red;
}

className

The className prop works like a normal className, but you can also pass it a function to customize the classNames applied based on the active and pending state of the link.

<NavLink
  to="/messages"
  className={({ isActive, isPending, isTransitioning }) =>
    [
      isPending ? "pending" : "",
      isActive ? "active" : "",
      isTransitioning ? "transitioning" : "",
    ].join(" ")
  }
>
  Messages
</NavLink>

style

The style prop works like a normal style prop, but you can also pass it a function to customize the styles applied based on the active and pending state of the link.

<NavLink
  to="/messages"
  style={({ isActive, isPending, isTransitioning }) => {
    return {
      fontWeight: isActive ? "bold" : "",
      color: isPending ? "red" : "black",
      viewTransitionName: isTransitioning ? "slide" : "",
    };
  }}
>
  Messages
</NavLink>

children

You can pass a render prop as children to customize the content of the <NavLink> based on the active and pending state, which is useful to change styles on internal elements.

<NavLink to="/tasks">
  {({ isActive, isPending, isTransitioning }) => (
    <span className={isActive ? "active" : ""}>Tasks</span>
  )}
</NavLink>

end

The end prop changes the matching logic for the active and pending states to only match to the "end" of the NavLink's to path. If the URL is longer than to, it will no longer be considered active.

A note on links to the root route

<NavLink to="/"> is an exceptional case because every URL matches /. To avoid this matching every single route by default, it effectively ignores the end prop and only matches when you're at the root route.

caseSensitive

Adding the caseSensitive prop changes the matching logic to make it case sensitive.

aria-current

When a NavLink is active it will automatically apply <a aria-current="page"> to the underlying anchor tag. See aria-current on MDN.

reloadDocument

The reloadDocument property can be used to skip client side routing and let the browser handle the transition normally (as if it were an <a href>).

unstable_viewTransition

The unstable_viewTransition prop enables a View Transition for this navigation by wrapping the final state update in document.startViewTransition(). By default, during the transition a transitioning class will be added to the <a> element that you can use to customize the view transition.

a.transitioning p {
  view-transition-name: "image-title";
}

a.transitioning img {
  view-transition-name: "image-expand";
}

<NavLink to={to} unstable_viewTransition>
  <p>Image Number {idx}</p>
  <img src={src} alt={`Img ${idx}`} />
</NavLink>

You may also use the className/style props or the render props passed to children to further customize based on the isTransitioning value.

<NavLink to={to} unstable_viewTransition>
  {({ isTransitioning }) => (
    <>
      <p
        style={{
          viewTransitionName: isTransitioning
            ? "image-title"
            : "",
        }}
      >
        Image Number {idx}
      </p>
      <img
        src={src}
        alt={`Img ${idx}`}
        style={{
          viewTransitionName: isTransitioning
            ? "image-expand"
            : "",
        }}
      />
    </>
  )}
</NavLink>