js Community,
I’m working on a Next.js application and have some confusion regarding pre-rendering and client-side rendering. I’ve been using the ‘use client’ directive at the top of my components to ensure they are rendered on the client side. However, when I inspect the source code in my browser, I see a lot of pre-rendered HTML. Here is an example of what I see:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html id="__next_error__">
<head>
<meta charSet="utf-8"/>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"/>
<link rel="preload" as="script" fetchPriority="low" href="/_next/static/chunks/webpack-6ccd546df7026715.js"/>
<script src="/_next/static/chunks/fd9d1056-50156f73129e00b3.js" async=""></script>
<script src="/_next/static/chunks/7023-cc046719c82ee6d4.js" async=""></script>
<script src="/_next/static/chunks/main-app-55bbd77d79f9187f.js" async=""></script>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" sizes="16x16"/>
<script src="/_next/static/chunks/polyfills-78c92fac7aa8fdd8.js" noModule=""></script>
</head>
<body>
<script src="/_next/static/chunks/webpack-6ccd546df7026715.js" async=""></script>
<!-- More pre-rendered code here -->
</body>
</html>
My understanding was that with ‘use client’, the components would only render on the client side, so I didn’t expect to see so much pre-rendered content in the initial HTML.
Could someone please explain why this is happening? How does Next.js handle pre-rendering and client-side rendering in this context? Does using ‘use client’ still involve some form of server-side pre-rendering, and if so, what are the benefits?
Thanks in advance for your insights!
2