How To Add Styling To An Active Link In NextJS

For my latest project, I wanted to change the background color of the active navigation link in the <Header> when being clicked. When working with <Link> in React (using React-Router) in the past, I had the possibility to add an activeClassName to the <Link> to change the style when being active. But this built-in <Link> is not available in NextJS. Let me show you the differences and how you can add an active class to a <Link> in NextJS.

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Table Of Contents

1. React's activeClassName
2. Create An Active Link In NextJS

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1. React's activeClassName

This special version of the <Link> tag is called <NavLink> and adds styling attributes to the rendered element when it matches the current URL. There are two different ways to add styling.

activeClassName: string

The class is given to the element when it is active by writing:

<NavLink to="/about" activeClassName="active">
  About
</NavLink>

activeStyle: object

The styles is applied to the element when it is active by writing:

<NavLink to="/about" activeStyle={{fontWeight: "bold"}}>
  About
</NavLink>

2. Create An Active Link In NextJS

The default <Link> component from NextJS doesn't allow to distinguish between active and non-active links. In NextJS, you can use the built-in router to detect an active link.

I am using the useRouter hook inside my "Header function component" and created a ternary operator to check if the <Link> to style matches the currently displayed route.

Here's the code:

import Link from 'next/link';
import { useRouter } from 'next/router';

export const Header = () => {
  const router = useRouter();

  return (
    <header>
      <Link href="/">
        <a className={router.pathname == "/" ? "active" : ""}>
           Home
        </a>
      </Link>
    </header>
  )
}

For more information on next/router check out the documentation.

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Thanks for your reading and time. I really appreciate it!

Comments

[Stephen Chiang]

Just a reminder to those who are reading this, that if you insert <a/> wrapped inside a custom component inside <Link/> that you should include passHref if the <a/> wraps anything other than a string, otherwise your site may take a hit on SEO.

[Julia 👩🏻‍💻 GDE]

Wow, thanks for this information, didn't know about that.

[Juan Fernando Giraldo Cardona]

I thank you for taking the time to write this post!
Sadly for Nextjs version 13, your 2 approach seems to be outdated because is an invalid action to have a component with an tag as child (unless you are willing to use "legacybehavior").
With your post you gave me an idea. This solution is a bit raw because still unable to use active pseudo-class in the component

<Link
    className={router.pathname == "/" ? "active" : ""}
    href="/"
 >
    Home
 </Link>

"active" is a set of styles defined in css module.
Let me know if you find something better. Best regards

[Julia 👩🏻‍💻 GDE]

Hey Juan, thanks for your message. Yeah, wrote that post a long time ago, but I don‘t think I will spend time on this topic any time soon again.

I am sure others are happ about your suggestions, so thank you for that.

[Syntax Sage]

why not use tailwind instead of css classes

[Matt Litherland]

For Next.js 13

Replace import { useRouter } from 'next/router';
With import { usePathname } from "next/navigation";

Replace const router = useRouter();
With const pathname = usePathname();

and then replace className={router.pathname == "/" ? "active" : ""}
with className={pathname == "/" ? "active" : ""}

Ref: usePathname

[Pragati Verma]

Thanks for adding Matt!

[Nghia La]

Works perfectly for Next.js 14 using Pages Router.

[eray Bartan]

julia it's fantactic tricks
how to change actve style in nextjs?
you save my day. tahnks a lot.

[Abdulhameed Ibrahim]

Thanks author you're a life saver.

[Matt Gregg]

Just a note, it would be sweet if your code samples were gist embeds or code blocks so people could copy/paste from them. The pictures look nice but it makes it harder to copy.

[Julia 👩🏻‍💻 GDE]

Hey Matt. Thank you so much for your suggestion. I changed the img to code blocks and will continue doing that :)

[w3bdesign]

I would recommend extracting this to a separate function. Then you can do the following:

const activeLink = (url: string, pathname: string) => pathname === url ? "navbar-link-active" : "";

Then you can do something like this in your links (if you use string literals):

${activeLink(link.url, router.pathname)

[Amr Yasser]

I'm a backend developer who has no knowledge in next.js. However, I needed to change something in the front-end. It took me much time trying to figure it out myself. Once I found this post, I could do it. Thanks a lot!

[Julia 👩🏻‍💻 GDE]

Glad that it helped :)

[Joshua Singleton]

This helped me out tremendously. Helped me out so much that I created an account just to say thank you!

[Julia 👩🏻‍💻 GDE]

Thank you so much for your kind words :) Glad it helped!

[Rishabh]

Take a look at this solution and please let me know your thoughts.
Highlight active links in next.js