What problem does it solve?
Modern single-page applications and multi-route React apps often feel jarring when UI state changes or the user navigates between views, and implementing polished, consistent transitions across routes, component enters/exits, and shared elements is difficult without deep platform knowledge or fragile third-party hacks. This guide provides a principled approach to use the browser and React view transition primitives to create coherent, accessible, and performant animations that gracefully degrade on unsupported browsers.
Core Features & Use Cases
- Shared element morphs for image and hero transitions between list and detail views to communicate continuity.
- Directional navigation animations for hierarchical flows and ordered sequences, plus non-directional fades for lateral navigation.
- Suspense reveals, list reorder animations, and composition patterns that combine list identity with shared elements, with Next.js App Router integration and accessibility/reduced-motion handling.
- Real-world example: a photo gallery where selecting a thumbnail morphs the image into a detail view while the page slides in directionally and the back navigation reverses the motion.
Quick Start
Wrap the transitioning parts of your UI with ViewTransition boundaries, trigger transitions with startTransition and router.push or Suspense/useDeferredValue as appropriate, and copy the provided CSS recipes into your global stylesheet for consistent, accessible results.
