How Next.js Turns JSX and TypeScript Into Plain JavaScript

Paste one line of JSX into a browser console:

const el = <h1>Hi</h1>; // SyntaxError: Unexpected token '<'

The browser has no idea what <h1> means inside JavaScript. Neither does it understand : string or type Props. Yet every Next.js app is written in exactly that. Something sits between your editor and the browser, translating.

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The mental model: a translator at the door

The browser only speaks plain JavaScript. A compiler erases your types and rewrites every JSX tag as a function call, so what reaches the browser is ordinary JS.

Types and JSX are for you and your editor. They never ship. Picture a translator who reads your file, crosses out the notes in the margins (types), and rewrites the shorthand (JSX) in full sentences (function calls).

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What the translator does to one component

Here's a tiny TypeScript component:

type Props = { name: string };

export function Hello({ name }: Props) {
  return <h1 className="title">Hi {name}</h1>;
}

I ran it through SWC, the compiler bundled with Next.js 16.4, using the same JSX settings Next.js uses. This is the real output:

import { jsxs as _jsxs } from "react/jsx-runtime";

export function Hello({ name }) {
  return /*#__PURE__*/ _jsxs("h1", {
    className: "title",
    children: ["Hi ", name],
  });
}

Two things happened:

1. Types were erased. type Props and : Props are gone. Not checked, just deleted.
2. JSX became a function call. <h1 className="title"> turned into _jsxs("h1", { className: "title", children: [...] }). The tag name is the first argument; attributes and children become an object.

When that function runs, it returns a plain object, nothing magic:

{ type: "h1", props: { className: "title", children: ["Hi ", "Sara"] } }

That object is a React element: a description of what to draw. React reads these descriptions later and turns them into real DOM (or HTML on the server).

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Who does what in Next.js

Translating one file isn't the whole job. A real app has hundreds of files importing each other, so two tools share the work:

Step	Tool	What it does
Compile each file	SWC (written in Rust)	Erases types, rewrites JSX, turns modern syntax into what your target browsers support
Bundle	Turbopack (default in Next.js 16)	Follows every import, groups files into chunks, splits server code from client code
Minify (production)	SWC	Shortens names, removes dead code, makes the files small

SWC replaced Babel in Next.js 12. If you add a .babelrc, Next.js falls back to Babel for that project, and you lose the speed.

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In practice: what this means for you

Types aren't checked while you develop. SWC deletes types without reading them. So next dev will happily run code with type errors; only your editor complains. next build is where the check happens: it runs the TypeScript compiler (tsc) and fails the build on errors, unless you set typescript.ignoreBuildErrors.

import React is no longer needed in every file. Before React 17, JSX compiled to React.createElement(...), so React had to be in scope. The newer "automatic runtime" imports the helper for you (react/jsx-runtime), which is why that line disappeared from tutorials.

Server code doesn't ship. Turbopack builds separate bundles for the server and the browser. Server Components and their imports stay on the server; only files under a "use client" boundary end up in browser chunks. (More on that in What is 'use client'.)

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Say it in an interview

"Browsers only understand JavaScript, so Next.js compiles JSX and TypeScript first. SWC, a Rust compiler, strips the types without checking them and rewrites each JSX tag into a call like jsx('h1', props), which returns a plain object React uses to build the UI. Turbopack then bundles the files and splits server code from client code. Type checking is a separate step that runs in next build."

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Cheat sheet

• JSX → function call. <h1 a="b">x</h1> becomes jsx("h1", { a: "b", children: "x" }), which returns a React element (a plain object).
• Types → deleted. SWC erases them; tsc checks them only during next build.
• SWC compiles each file; Turbopack bundles them into server and client chunks.
• Automatic runtime (React 17+) is why you no longer write import React for JSX.
• Nothing you write in JSX or TypeScript reaches the browser as-is.

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Going deeper

Advanced and optional. Everything above is enough to explain this in an interview. This part is for the curious: full numbers, edge cases and what's still unproven.

See it yourself

You can call the same SWC build that Next.js uses from a Node script inside any Next.js project:

const swc = require("next/dist/build/swc");

swc.loadBindings().then(() =>
  swc.transform(source, {
    filename: "Hello.tsx",
    jsc: {
      parser: { syntax: "typescript", tsx: true },
      target: "es2022",
      transform: { react: { runtime: "automatic" } },
    },
  })
).then((r) => console.log(r.code));

That's how the output in this post was produced (Next.js 16.4.3, React 19.3.1).

jsx vs jsxs

The compiler picks jsxs when an element has several static children (an array) and jsx when it has one or none. React uses the difference to skip the "missing key" warning for children you wrote by hand, since those can't be reordered.

Development output is bigger

With development: true (what next dev does), the same component compiles to jsxDEV from react/jsx-dev-runtime, with extra arguments:

_jsxDEV("h1", { className: "title", children: ["Hi ", name] }, void 0, true, {
  fileName: "Hello.tsx",
  lineNumber: 3,
  columnNumber: 10,
});

That source location is how React DevTools and error overlays point you to the exact line in your file.

What /*#__PURE__*/ is for

It tells the minifier "this call has no side effects." If the result is never used, the minifier can delete the whole call. Without the comment, it has to assume calling a function might do something and keep it.

Classic vs automatic runtime

	Classic (before React 17)	Automatic (React 17+)
Output	React.createElement("h1", props, ...children)	jsx("h1", { ...props, children })
Import	You write import React from "react"	Compiler adds import { jsx } from "react/jsx-runtime"
Children	Extra arguments	A children prop

Further reading

• Next.js Compiler: why Next.js moved from Babel to SWC.
• Introducing the new JSX transform: the React team's post on the automatic runtime.
• Turbopack: the bundler that's now the default.

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Originally published on Bitlyst.