Next.js 13.5 brings faster startups and refreshes

Vercel has released the Next.js 13.5 web framework, which features faster startups and refreshes and lower memory usage.

Unveiled September 19, version 13.5 improves local server startup time by 22%, letting developers iterate faster with the App Router and Pages Router. Since Next.js 13.4 was announced in May, the Vercel team has been focused on improving the performance and reliability of App Router applications.

Also featured in the Next.js 13.5 release is faster HMR (Hot Module Replacement, more commonly known as Fast Refresh). The new release is reported to yield 29% faster iterations when saving changes. Memory usage was reduced by 40 percent and more than 438 bugs were patched for this release. Version 13.5 also optimizes package imports, improving both local development performance and production cold starts when using large icon or component libraries, or other dependencies that re-export hundreds or thousands of modules.

Deployment instructions for Next.js can be found at Vercel.com. Upgrades can be done via the following command:

npm i next@latest react@latest react-dom@latest eslint-config-next@latest

Positioned as the React framework for web development, Next.js automatically abstracts and configures tools for the React JavaScript library such as compiling and bundling. Next.js features capabilities such as dynamic HTML streaming, CSS support, client and server rendering, data fetching, and React server components. Next.js 13.5 also adds a new experimental function, unstable_getImgProps(), to support advanced use cases without using the component directly, including working with background-image or image-set. The company says that Next.js features the work of 2,800 developers as well as the core team at Vercel and industry partners including Google and Meta.