Storybook for Next.js

Storybook for Next.js is a framework that makes it easy to develop and test UI components in isolation for Next.js applications. It includes:

• 🔀 Routing
• 🖼 Image optimization
• ⤵️ Absolute imports
• 🎨 Styling
• 🎛 Webpack & Babel config
• 💫 and more!

Requirements

• Next.js ≥ 13.5
• Storybook ≥ 7.0

Getting started

In a project without Storybook

Follow the prompts after running this command in your Next.js project's root directory:

More on getting started with Storybook.

In a project with Storybook

This framework is designed to work with Storybook 7+. If you’re not already using v7, upgrade with this command:

Automatic migration

When running the upgrade command above, you should get a prompt asking you to migrate to @storybook/nextjs, which should handle everything for you. In case that auto-migration does not work for your project, refer to the manual migration below.

Manual migration

First, install the framework:

Then, update your .storybook/main.js|ts to change the framework property:

Finally, if you were using Storybook plugins to integrate with Next.js, those are no longer necessary when using this framework and can be removed:

Run the Setup Wizard

If all goes well, you should see a setup wizard that will help you get started with Storybook introducing you to the main concepts and features, including how the UI is organized, how to write your first story, and how to test your components' response to various inputs utilizing controls.

If you skipped the wizard, you can always run it again by adding the ?path=/onboarding query parameter to the URL of your Storybook instance, provided that the example stories are still available.

Next.js's Image component

This framework allows you to use Next.js's next/image with no configuration.

Local images

Local images are supported.

Remote images

Remote images are also supported.

Next.js font optimization

next/font is partially supported in Storybook. The packages next/font/google and next/font/local are supported.

next/font/google

You don't have to do anything. next/font/google is supported out of the box.

next/font/local

For local fonts you have to define the src property. The path is relative to the directory where the font loader function is called.

If the following component defines your localFont like this:

You have to tell Storybook where the fonts directory is located, via the staticDirs configuration. The from value is relative to the .storybook directory. The to value is relative to the execution context of Storybook. Very likely it is the root of your project.

Not supported features of next/font

The following features are not supported (yet). Support for these features might be planned for the future:

• Support font loaders configuration in next.config.js
• fallback option
• adjustFontFallback option
• preload option gets ignored. Storybook handles Font loading its own way.
• display option gets ignored. All fonts are loaded with display set to "block" to make Storybook load the font properly.

Mocking fonts during testing

Occasionally fetching fonts from Google may fail as part of your Storybook build step. It is highly recommended to mock these requests, as those failures can cause your pipeline to fail as well. Next.js supports mocking fonts via a JavaScript module located where the env var NEXT_FONT_GOOGLE_MOCKED_RESPONSES references.

For example, using GitHub Actions:

Your mocked fonts will look something like this:

Next.js routing

Next.js's router is automatically stubbed for you so that when the router is interacted with, all of its interactions are automatically logged to the Actions panel if you have the Storybook actions addon.

Overriding defaults

Per-story overrides can be done by adding a nextjs.router property onto the story parameters. The framework will shallowly merge whatever you put here into the router.

Default router

The default values on the stubbed router are as follows (see globals for more details on how globals work).

Actions integration caveats

If you override a function, you lose the automatic action tab integration and have to build it out yourself, which looks something like this (make sure you install the @storybook/addon-actions package):

Next.js navigation

Set nextjs.appDirectory to true

If your story imports components that use next/navigation, you need to set the parameter nextjs.appDirectory to true in for that component's stories:

If your Next.js project uses the app directory for every page (in other words, it does not have a pages directory), you can set the parameter nextjs.appDirectory to true in the .storybook/preview.js|ts file to apply it to all stories.

Overriding defaults

Per-story overrides can be done by adding a nextjs.navigation property onto the story parameters. The framework will shallowly merge whatever you put here into the router.

useSelectedLayoutSegment, useSelectedLayoutSegments, and useParams hooks

The useSelectedLayoutSegment, useSelectedLayoutSegments, and useParams hooks are supported in Storybook. You have to set the nextjs.navigation.segments parameter to return the segments or the params you want to use.

With the above configuration, the component rendered in the stories would receive the following values from the hooks:

To use useParams, you have to use a segments array where each element is an array containing two strings. The first string is the param key and the second string is the param value.

With the above configuration, the component rendered in the stories would receive the following values from the hooks:

The default value of nextjs.navigation.segments is [] if not set.

Default navigation context

The default values on the stubbed navigation context are as follows:

Actions integration caveats

If you override a function, you lose the automatic action tab integration and have to build it out yourself, which looks something like this (make sure you install the @storybook/addon-actions package):

Next.js Head

next/head is supported out of the box. You can use it in your stories like you would in your Next.js application. Please keep in mind, that the Head children are placed into the head element of the iframe that Storybook uses to render your stories.

Sass/Scss

Global Sass/Scss stylesheets are supported without any additional configuration as well. Just import them into .storybook/preview.js|ts

This will automatically include any of your custom Sass configurations in your next.config.js file.

CSS/Sass/Scss Modules

CSS modules work as expected.

Styled JSX

The built in CSS-in-JS solution for Next.js is styled-jsx, and this framework supports that out of the box too, zero config.

You can use your own babel config too. This is an example of how you can customize styled-jsx.

PostCSS

Next.js lets you customize PostCSS config. Thus this framework will automatically handle your PostCSS config for you.

This allows for cool things like zero-config Tailwind! (See Next.js' example)

Absolute imports

Absolute imports from the root directory are supported.

Also OK for global styles in .storybook/preview.js|ts!

Runtime config

Next.js allows for Runtime Configuration which lets you import a handy getConfig function to get certain configuration defined in your next.config.js file at runtime.

In the context of Storybook with this framework, you can expect Next.js's Runtime Configuration feature to work just fine.

Note, because Storybook doesn't server render your components, your components will only see what they normally see on the client side (i.e. they won't see serverRuntimeConfig but will see publicRuntimeConfig).

For example, consider the following Next.js config:

Calls to getConfig would return the following object when called within Storybook:

Custom Webpack config

Next.js comes with a lot of things for free out of the box like Sass support, but sometimes you add custom Webpack config modifications to Next.js. This framework takes care of most of the Webpack modifications you would want to add. If Next.js supports a feature out of the box, then that feature will work out of the box in Storybook. If Next.js doesn't support something out of the box, but makes it easy to configure, then this framework will do the same for that thing for Storybook.

Any Webpack modifications desired for Storybook should be made in .storybook/main.js|ts.

Note: Not all Webpack modifications are copy/paste-able between next.config.js and .storybook/main.js|ts. It is recommended to do your research on how to properly make your modification to Storybook's Webpack config and on how Webpack works.

Below is an example of how to add SVGR support to Storybook with this framework.

Typescript

Storybook handles most Typescript configurations, but this framework adds additional support for Next.js's support for Absolute Imports and Module path aliases. In short, it takes into account your tsconfig.json's baseUrl and paths. Thus, a tsconfig.json like the one below would work out of the box.

React Server Components (RSC)

(⚠️ Experimental)

If your app uses React Server Components (RSC), Storybook can render them in stories in the browser.

To enable this set the experimentalRSC feature flag in your .storybook/main.js|ts config:

Setting this flag automatically wraps your story in a Suspense wrapper, which is able to render asynchronous components in NextJS's version of React.

If this wrapper causes problems in any of your existing stories, you can selectively disable it using the react.rsc parameter at the global/component/story level:

Note that wrapping your server components in Suspense does not help if your server components access server-side resources like the file system or Node-specific libraries. To work around this, you'll need to mock out your data access layer using Webpack aliases or an addon like storybook-addon-module-mock.

If your server components access data via the network, we recommend using the MSW Storybook Addon to mock network requests.

In the future we will provide better mocking support in Storybook and support for Server Actions.

Notes for Yarn v2 and v3 users

If you're using Yarn v2 or v3, you may run into issues where Storybook can't resolve style-loader or css-loader. For example, you might get errors like:

This is because those versions of Yarn have different package resolution rules than Yarn v1.x. If this is the case for you, please install the package directly.

FAQ

Stories for pages/components which fetch data

Next.js pages can fetch data directly within server components in the app directory, which often include module imports that only run in a node environment. This does not (currently) work within Storybook, because if you import from a Next.js page file containing those node module imports in your stories, your Storybook's Webpack will crash because those modules will not run in a browser. To get around this, you can extract the component in your page file into a separate file and import that pure component in your stories. Or, if that's not feasible for some reason, you can polyfill those modules in your Storybook's webpackFinal configuration.

Before

After

Statically imported images won't load

Make sure you are treating image imports the same way you treat them when using next/image in normal development.

Before using this framework, image imports would import the raw path to the image (e.g. 'static/media/stories/assets/logo.svg'). Now image imports work the "Next.js way", meaning that you now get an object when importing an image. For example:

Therefore, if something in Storybook isn't showing the image properly, make sure you expect the object to be returned from an import instead of only the asset path.

See local images for more detail on how Next.js treats static image imports.

Module not found: Error: Can't resolve package name

You might get this if you're using Yarn v2 or v3. See Notes for Yarn v2 and v3 users for more details.

What if I'm using the Vite builder?

The @storybook/nextjs package abstracts the Webpack 5 builder and provides all the necessary Webpack configuration needed (and used internally) by Next.js. Webpack is currently the official builder in Next.js, and Next.js does not support Vite, therefore it is not possible to use Vite with @storybook/nextjs. You can use @storybook/react-vite framework instead, but at the cost of having a degraded experience, and we won't be able to provide you official support.

Error: You are importing avif images, but you don't have sharp installed. You have to install sharp in order to use image optimization features in Next.js.

sharp is a dependency of Next.js's image optimization feature. If you see this error, you need to install sharp in your project.

You can refer to the Install sharp to Use Built-In Image Optimization in the Next.js documentation for more information.

API

Parameters

This framework contributes the following parameters to Storybook, under the nextjs namespace:

appDirectory

Type: boolean

Default: false

If your story imports components that use next/navigation, you need to set the parameter nextjs.appDirectory to true. Because this is a parameter, you can apply it to a single story, all stories for a component, or every story in your Storybook. See Next.js Navigation for more details.

navigation

Type:

Default value:

The router object that is passed to the next/navigation context. See Next.js's navigation docs for more details.

router

Type:

The router object that is passed to the next/router context. See Next.js's router docs for more details.

Options

You can pass an options object for additional configuration if needed:

The available options are:

builder

Type: Record<string, any>

Configure options for the framework's builder. For Next.js, available options can be found in the Webpack builder docs.

image

Type: object

Props to pass to every instance of next/image. See next/image docs for more details.

nextConfigPath

Type: string

The absolute path to the next.config.js file. This is necessary if you have a custom next.config.js file that is not in the root directory of your project.