Optimizing Package Bundling

Bundling external packages can significantly improve the performance of your application. By default, packages imported into your application are not bundled. This can impact performance or might not work if external packages are not pre-bundled, for example, if imported from a monorepo or node_modules. This page will guide you through how to analyze and configure package bundling.

Analyzing JavaScript bundles

@next/bundle-analyzer is a plugin for Next.js that helps you manage the size of your application bundles. It generates a visual report of the size of each package and their dependencies. You can use the information to remove large dependencies, split, or lazy-load your code.

Installation

Install the plugin by running the following command:

npm i @next/bundle-analyzer
# or
yarn add @next/bundle-analyzer
# or
pnpm add @next/bundle-analyzer

Then, add the bundle analyzer's settings to your next.config.js.

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {}
 
const withBundleAnalyzer = require('@next/bundle-analyzer')({
  enabled: process.env.ANALYZE === 'true',
})
 
module.exports = withBundleAnalyzer(nextConfig)

Generating a report

Run the following command to analyze your bundles:

ANALYZE=true npm run build
# or
ANALYZE=true yarn build
# or
ANALYZE=true pnpm build

The report will open three new tabs in your browser, which you can inspect. Periodically evaluating your application's bundles can help you maintain application performance over time.

Optimizing package imports

Some packages, such as icon libraries, can export hundreds of modules, which can cause performance issues in development and production.

You can optimize how these packages are imported by adding the optimizePackageImports option to your next.config.js. This option will only load the modules you actually use, while still giving you the convenience of writing import statements with many named exports.

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
  experimental: {
    optimizePackageImports: ['icon-library'],
  },
}
 
module.exports = nextConfig

Next.js also optimizes some libraries automatically, thus they do not need to be included in the optimizePackageImports list. See the full list.

Bundling specific packages

To bundle specific packages, you can use the transpilePackages option in your next.config.js. This option is useful for bundling external packages that are not pre-bundled, for example, in a monorepo or imported from node_modules.

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
  transpilePackages: ['package-name'],
}
 
module.exports = nextConfig

Bundling all packages

To automatically bundle all packages (default behavior in the App Router), you can use the bundlePagesRouterDependencies option in your next.config.js.

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
  bundlePagesRouterDependencies: true,
}
 
module.exports = nextConfig

Opting specific packages out of bundling

If you have the bundlePagesRouterDependencies option enabled, you can opt specific packages out of automatic bundling using the serverExternalPackages option in your next.config.js:

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
  // Automatically bundle external packages in the Pages Router:
  bundlePagesRouterDependencies: true,
  // Opt specific packages out of bundling for both App and Pages Router:
  serverExternalPackages: ['package-name'],
}
 
module.exports = nextConfig