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Next.js App Router

Learn how to use Material UI with the Next.js App Router.

Next.js and React Server Components

The Next.js App Router implements React Server Components, an upcoming feature for React.

To support the App Router, currently all components and hooks from MUI libraries (Material UI, Joy UI, Base UI etc.) are exported with the "use client" directive.

Using Material UI with the default theme

If you're using the default theme, you can add Material UI components to Next.js routing files such as layout.js or page.js (which are Server Components by default) without any additional configuration, as shown below:

// app/layout.js - no directives needed
export default function RootLayout(props) {
  const { children } = props;
  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <body>{children}</body>
    </html>
  )
}

// app/page.js - no directives needed
import Box from '@mui/material/Box';
import Card from '@mui/material/Card';
import Container from '@mui/material/Container';
import Typography from '@mui/material/Typography';

export default function Home() {
  return (
    <main>
      <Container>
        <Box>
          <Card>
            <Typography variant="h2">Hello World ~</Typography>
          </Card>
        </Box>
      </Container>
    </main>
  );
}

Using Material UI with a custom theme

Theme Registry

To set up the theme context, create a custom ThemeRegistry component that combines the Emotion CacheProvider, the Material UI ThemeProvider, and the useServerInsertedHTML hook from next/navigation as follows:

// app/ThemeRegistry.tsx
'use client';
import createCache from '@emotion/cache';
import { useServerInsertedHTML } from 'next/navigation';
import { CacheProvider } from '@emotion/react';
import { ThemeProvider } from '@mui/material/styles';
import CssBaseline from '@mui/material/CssBaseline';
import theme from '/path/to/your/theme';

// This implementation is from emotion-js
// https://github.com/emotion-js/emotion/issues/2928#issuecomment-1319747902
export default function ThemeRegistry(props) {
  const { options, children } = props;

  const [{ cache, flush }] = React.useState(() => {
    const cache = createCache(options);
    cache.compat = true;
    const prevInsert = cache.insert;
    let inserted: string[] = [];
    cache.insert = (...args) => {
      const serialized = args[1];
      if (cache.inserted[serialized.name] === undefined) {
        inserted.push(serialized.name);
      }
      return prevInsert(...args);
    };
    const flush = () => {
      const prevInserted = inserted;
      inserted = [];
      return prevInserted;
    };
    return { cache, flush };
  });

  useServerInsertedHTML(() => {
    const names = flush();
    if (names.length === 0) {
      return null;
    }
    let styles = '';
    for (const name of names) {
      styles += cache.inserted[name];
    }
    return (
      <style
        key={cache.key}
        data-emotion={`${cache.key} ${names.join(' ')}`}
        dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{
          __html: styles,
        }}
      />
    );
  });

  return (
    <CacheProvider value={cache}>
      <ThemeProvider theme={theme}>
        <CssBaseline />
        {children}
      </ThemeProvider>
    </CacheProvider>
  );
}

// app/layout.js
export default function RootLayout(props) {
  const { children } = props;
  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <body>
        <ThemeRegistry options={{ key: 'mui' }}>{children}</ThemeRegistry>
      </body>
    </html>
  );
}

CSS injection order

By default, Emotion injects Material UI styles at the bottom of the HTML <head>, which gives them precedence over custom styles—for example if you are customizing Material UI with CSS modules, Tailwind CSS, or even plain CSS.

Emotion provides the prepend: true option for createCache to reverse the injection order, so custom styles can override Material UI styles without using !important.

Currently, prepend does not work reliably with the App Router, but you can work around it by wrapping Emotion styles in a CSS @layer with a modification to the snippet above:

 useServerInsertedHTML(() => {
   const names = flush();
   if (names.length === 0) {
     return null;
   }
   let styles = '';
   for (const name of names) {
     styles += cache.inserted[name];
   }
   return (
     <style
       key={cache.key}
       data-emotion={`${cache.key} ${names.join(' ')}`}
       dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{
-        __html: styles,
+        __html: options.prepend ? `@layer emotion {${styles}}` : styles,
       }}
     />
   );
 });

Function props

Props passed from Server Components—for example page.js or other routing files—must be serializable.

This works without any additional directives:

// app/page.tsx
import Box from '@mui/material/Box';
import Card from '@mui/material/Card';
import Container from '@mui/material/Container';
import Typography from '@mui/material/Typography';

export default function Page() {
  return (
    <Container maxWidth="lg">
      <Box>
        <Card raised>
          <Typography variant="h2">Hello World</Typography>
        </Card>
      </Box>
    </Container>
  );
}