Introduction to Angular Signals

In the world of Angular, Signals represent the biggest shift in how the framework handles data since its inception. Think of a Signal as a "wrapper" around a value that can notify anyone interested when that value changes.

Angular Signals were introduced as a developer preview in Angular 16(released in May 2023). The feature became stable and generally available with the release of Angular 17. Also signal based forms was introduced in Angular 21 (released in November 2025)

Signals provide three main building blocks for managing your application state:

1. Writable Signals: These are your primary data sources where you can directly set or update values.

2. Computed Signals: These are read-only signals that derive their value from other signals. They are "lazy"—they only re-calculate when you actually read them and only if their dependencies have changed.
   Example: const doubleCount = computed(() => count() * 2);

3. Effects: An effect is a function that runs whenever the signals it calls change. This is perfect for "side effects" like logging, syncing with LocalStorage, or manual DOM manipulations.

The ultimate goal is to allow Angular to run without Zone.js. This leads to:

• Smaller bundle sizes.
• Faster initial load times.
• Easier debugging (since you aren't digging through massive Zone.js stack traces)

Angular provides a very good documentation and interactive environment to test and understand these concepts. Angular Docs

Thanks for reading. Happy coding!!!