Core 2 is included in the React SDK starting with version 5. This new version ships with an improved design and UX for its built-in components, no "flash of white page" when authenticating, and a variety of smaller DX improvements and housekeeping items. Each of the potentially breaking changes are detailed in this guide, below.
By the end of this guide, you’ll have successfully upgraded your React project to use @clerk/clerk-react v5. You’ll learn how to update your dependencies, resolve breaking changes, and find deprecations. Step-by-step instructions will lead you through the process.
Preparing to upgrade
Before uprading, it's highly recommended that you update your Clerk SDKs to the latest Core 1 version (npm i @clerk/clerk-react@4). Some changes required for Core 2 SDKs can be applied incrementally to the v5 release, which should contribute to a smoother upgrading experience. After updating, look out for deprecation messages in your terminal and browser console. By resolving these deprecations you'll be able to skip many breaking changes from Core 2.
Note that Core 2 is currently in beta, while we field feedback and ensure stability. Deploying beta versions to production is not recommended and should be done at your own risk.
Additionally, some of the minumum version requirements for some base dependencies have been updated such that versions that are no longer supported or are at end-of-life are no longer guaranteed to work correctly with Clerk.
Updating Node.js
You need to have Node.js 18.17.0 or later installed. Last year, Node.js 16 entered EOL (End of life) status, so support for this version has been removed across Clerk SDKs. You can check your Node.js version by running node -v in your terminal. Learn more about how to update and install Node.js(opens in a new tab).
Updating React
All react-dependent Clerk SDKs now require you to use React 18 or higher. You can update your project by installing the latest version of react and react-dom.
Whenever you feel ready, go ahead and install the latest beta version of any Clerk SDKs you are using. Make sure that you are prepared to patch some breaking changes before your app will work properly, however. The commands below demonstrate how to install the latest beta.
terminal
npminstall@clerk/clerk-react@beta
terminal
yarnadd@clerk/clerk-react@beta
terminal
pnpmadd@clerk/clerk-react@beta
CLI upgrade helper
Clerk now provides a @clerk/upgrade CLI tool that you can use to ease the upgrade process. The tool will scan your codebase and produce a list of changes you'll need to apply to your project. It should catch the vast majority of the changes needed for a successful upgrade to any SDK including Core 2. This can save you a lot of time reading through changes that don't apply to your project.
To run the CLI tool, navigate to your project and run it in the terminal:
terminal
npx@clerk/upgrade
terminal
yarndlx@clerk/upgrade
terminal
pnpmdlx@clerk/upgrade
If you are having trouble with npx, it's also possible to install directly with npm i @clerk/upgrade -g, and can then be run with the clerk-upgrade command.
Breaking Changes
Component design adjustments
The new version ships with improved design and UX across all of Clerk's UI components. If you have used the appearance prop or tokens for a custom theme, you will likely need to make some adjustments to ensure your styling is still looking great. If you're using the localization prop you will likely need to make adjustments to account for added or removed localization keys.
Defining redirect URLs for after sign up, in, and/or out via the Clerk dashboard has been removed in Core 2. In your Clerk dashboard, under "paths", there is a section called "Component paths", where URLs could be defined that had a deprecation warning. In Core 2, this functionality has been removed, and specifying redirect paths via the dashboard will no longer work. If you need to pass a redirect URL for after sign in/up/out, there are a few different ways this can be done(opens in a new tab), from environment variables to middleware to supplying them directly to the relevant components.
As part of this change, the default URL for each of these props has been set to /, so if you are passing / explicitly to any one of the above props, that line is no longer necessary and can be removed.
navigate prop to ClerkProvider replaced by routerPush and routerReplace
The navigate prop on ClerkProvider allowed developers to override the default navigation behavior with a custom function. However, navigate was only able to push, not replace routes. We have now added the capability for the router to push or replace, and as such, upgraded the provider prop so that it can handle either depending on the circumstance.
Two new props have been added to ClerkProvider that replace the single navigate prop, and can be used to override the default navigation behavior for either a push or replace navigation. For more information on what push and replace mean in relation to the browser history api, check out these wonderful MDN docs(opens in a new tab).
If you’d like to keep the same behavior as you had with the single navigate prop, pass the exact same function to both routerPush and routerReplace and the behavior will be identical. For example:
- <ClerkProvider navigate={ x => x } />+ <ClerkProvider routerPush={ x => x } routerReplace={ x => x } />
However, you now have the option to differentiate behavior based on whether the navigation will be a push or replace.
Removed: orgs claim on JWT
In the previous version of Clerk's SDKs, if you decode the session token that Clerk returns from the server, you'll currently find an orgs claim on it. It lists all the orgs associated with the given user. Now, Clerk returns the org_id, org_slug, and org_role of the active organization.
The orgs claim was part of the JwtPayload. Here are a few examples of where the JwtPayload could be found.
If you would like to have your JWT return all of the user's organizations, you can create a custom JWT template in your dashboard. Add { "orgs": "user.organizations" } to it.
Path routing is now the default
On components like <SignIn /> you can define the props routing and path. routing can be set to 'hash' | 'path' | 'virtual' and describes the routing strategy that should be used. path defines where the component is mounted when routing="path" is used.
In the latest version, the defaultrouting strategy has become 'path'. Unless you change the routing prop, you'll need to define the path prop. The affected components are:
<SignIn />
<SignUp />
<UserProfile />
<CreateOrganization />
<OrganizationProfile />
Here's how you'd use the components going forward:
There are a number of Clerk primitives that contain images, and previously they each had different property names, like avatarUrl, logoUrl, profileImageUrl, etc. In order to promote consistency and make it simpler for developers to know where to find associated images, all image properties are now named imageUrl. See the list below for all affected classes:
The profileImageUrl property of any OrganizationMembershipPublicUserData object has been changed to imageUrl.
Deprecation removals & housekeeping
As part of this major version, a number of previously deprecated props, arugments, methods, etc. have been removed. Additionally there have been some changes to things that are only used internally, or only used very rarely. It's highly unlikely that any given app will encounter any of these items, but they are all breaking changes, so they have all been documented below.
For this section more than any other one, please use the CLI upgrade tool (npx @clerk/upgrade). Changes in this
section are very unlikely to appear in your codebase, the tool will save time looking for them.
Deprecation removals
If you are updating a user's password via the User.update method(opens in a new tab), it must be changed to User.updatePassword(opens in a new tab) instead. This method will require the current password as well as the desired new password. We made this update to improve the security of password changes. Example below:
The frontendApi prop passed to <ClerkProvider> was renamed to publishableKey. Note: The values are different, so this is not just a key replacement. You can visit your Clerk dashboard(opens in a new tab) to copy/paste the new keys after choosing your framework. Make sure to update this in all environments (e.g. dev, staging, production). More information.
The afterSwitchOrganizationUrl prop on the <OrganizationSwitcher /> component has been renamed to afterSelectOrganizationUrl. This is a quick and simple rename.
This type was extending ClerkProviderProps with but was not necessary. This type is typically used internally and is not required to be imported and used directly. If needed, import and use ClerkProviderProps instead.
Other Breaking changes
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
The response payload of Users.getOrganizationInvitationList was changed as part of the v5 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The return type for this function was previously [Items] but has now been updated to { data: [Items], totalCount: number }. Since Clerk's API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily. A before/after code example can be seen below:
The return type for this function was previously [Items] but has now been updated to { data: [Items], totalCount: number }. Since Clerk's API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily. A before/after code example can be seen below:
The response payload of Users.getOrganizationList was changed as part of the v5 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The return type for this function was previously [Items] but has now been updated to { data: [Items], totalCount: number }. Since Clerk's API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily. A before/after code example can be seen below:
Across Clerk's documentation and codebases the term "magic link" was changed to "email link" as it more accurately reflects the functionality.
Across Clerk's documentation and codebases the term "magic link" was changed to "email link" as it more accurately reflects functionality.
Across Clerk's documentation and codebases the term "magic link" was changed to "email link" as it more accurately reflects the functionality.
Across Clerk's documentation and codebases the term "magic link" was changed to "email link" as it more accurately reflects the functionality.
Across Clerk's documentation and codebases the term "magic link" was changed to "email link" as it more accurately reflects functionality.
The invitationList param to the useOrganizations hook has been replaced by invitations. This param also has a slightly different way of working, examples included below. Note also that useOrganizations is deprecated and should be updated to useOrganization instead.
// beforeconst { invitationList } =useOrganization({ invitationList: { limit: 10, offset: 1 },});// afterconst { invitations } =useOrganization({ invitations: { initialPage: 1, pageSize: 10, },});// you can also simply return all invitationsconst { invitations } =useOrganization({ invitations: true });
The WithSession higher order component has been removed. If you would still like to use this function in the way its implemented, it can be created quickly using Clerk's custom hooks(opens in a new tab). An example of how to do so is below:
exportconstWithSession= ({ children }) => {constsession=useSession();if (typeof children !=='function') thrownewError();return {children(session)};};
The WithClerk higher order component has been removed. If you would still like to use this function in the way its implemented, it can be created quickly using Clerk's custom hooks(opens in a new tab). An example of how to do so is below:
exportconstWithClerk= ({ children }) => {constclerk=useClerk();if (typeof children !=='function') thrownewError();return {children(clerk)};};
The WithUser higher order component has been removed. If you would still like to use this function in the way its implemented, it can be created quickly using Clerk's custom hooks(opens in a new tab). An example of how to do so is below:
exportconstWithUser= ({ children }) => {constuser=useUser();if (typeof children !=='function') thrownewError();return {children(user)};};
The withClerk higher order function has been removed. If you would still like to use this function in the way its implemented, it can be created quickly using Clerk's custom hooks(opens in a new tab). An example of how to do so is below:
The withSession higher order function has been removed. If you would still like to use this function in the way its implemented, it can be created quickly using Clerk's custom hooks(opens in a new tab). An example of how to do so is below:
The withUser higher order function has been removed. If you would still like to use this function in the way its implemented, it can be created quickly using Clerk's custom hooks(opens in a new tab). An example of how to do so is below:
MultiSessionAppSupport is a component that handles the intermediate “undefined” state for multisession apps by unmounting and remounting the components during the session switch (setActive call) in order to solve theoretical edge-cases that can arise while switching sessions. It is undocumented and intended only for internal use, so it has been moved to an /internal import path. Please note that internal imports are not intended for public use, and are outside the scope of semver.
- import { MultiSessionAppSupport } from '@clerk/clerk-react'+ import { MultiSessionAppSupport } from '@clerk/clerk-react/internal'
setSession should be replaced with setActive. The format of the parameters has changed slightly - setActive takes an object where setSession took params directly. The setActive function also can accept an organization param that is used to set the currently active organization. The return signature did not change. Read the API documentation for more detail. This function should be expected to be returned from one of the following Clerk hooks: useSessionList, useSignUp, or useSignIn. Some migration examples: