Andrew Scott shares new insights on zoneless, and why he doesn't expect a big performance boost. Plus, a mysterious new @angular/aria package appears with over 350 file changes.
🧠 Q&A on Zoneless
The monthly Q&A session took place. As always, Mark Thompson was the host and he was joined by Andrew Scott, who has been leading the zoneless project.
Here are the main takeaways:
Andrew doesn’t expect huge performance improvements from going zoneless, unless the application is truly enormous.
He sees the main advantage of removing zone.js in the fact that compiled code can make better use of native browser functions.
For example, the native async/await commands were always "downgraded" to simple Promises.
Promises can be patched, but not async and await.
That’s one of the key benefits of going zoneless.
OnPush also has a positive effect in zoneless. It’s not a requirement, but an indicator.
If OnPush works well in a zone.js-based application, that application is also ready for zoneless.
Signal Components might be the next iteration of zoneless.
According to Andrew, he simply doesn’t know when this is going to happen.
The reason is that the current AI trend has shifted priorities quite a bit.
Another topic was testing.
With zone.js, tests often run outside Angular’s zone. That means you had to trigger change detection manually. Sometimes it would fire automatically, but not always reliably.
Now, with zoneless, these problems are mostly gone. Testing becomes much more predictable and straightforward.
Last but not least - expect zoneless to become the default in Angular 21.
🧐 New @angular/aria Package???
It looks like we’re getting a new package called @angular/aria.
A pull request landed that doesn’t include a description or README. But if you look at it, you’ll see more than 350 changed files.
Many of them are moves from cdk/experimental into a new aria folder.
We’ll probably get more details once an official RFC or announcement is out.
💬 JetBrains JavaScript Day
JetBrains recently hosted the free online JavaScript Day.
Jessica Janiuk from the Angular team gave a talk about working on a large open-source project like Angular.
She mentioned that it’s completely normal to have a huge number of open issues, some of which stay open for years.
That’s simply because resources are limited and some fixes are complex.
She also explained that every change in Angular has to go through Google’s internal apps before it reaches the public.
That’s why the team is so careful with breaking changes.
📋 "State of JavaScript" Survey
The annual State of JavaScript survey is open again.
It’s one of the biggest surveys about the JavaScript ecosystem, where developers vote for their favorite tools and frameworks.
So don’t forget to vote for Angular - every vote counts!
🔴 Interesting Live Sessions
Two live sessions worth checking out this week.
AngularAir with Alfredo Perez
He presented his AI workflow, which he calls spec-driven development.
He used Claude Code together with Cursor to generate and refine specs automatically.
Really interesting to see how this kind of setup can speed up development.
ngAsia with Manfred Steyer
Manfred gave a detailed overview of the upcoming Signal Forms.
He showed how the new system works, how to migrate from old forms, and what the main differences are.
It’s a great introduction if you want to prepare for the next generation of Angular forms.
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