--- title: "Next.js 13 Upgrade Notes" description: "A record of my hands-on experience upgrading from Next.js 12 to 13, covering key points like Turbopack's build performance improvements and syntax changes for `next/image` and `next/link`." canonical_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/post/next-13-upgrade" author: "Mark Ku" author_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku" site: "Mark Ku's Tech Notes" date_published: "2022-12-23 01:01:01 +0800" category: "Frontend" tags: ["nextjs", "react", "upgrade", "turbopack", "frontend", "image", "link"] language: "en" license: "CC BY 4.0" license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" attribution: "when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original" --- # Next.js 13 Upgrade Notes ## Introduction This afternoon, I upgraded our company's project from Next.js 12 to Next.js 13. The Next.js release cycle is really fast, and Next.js 13 brings us several new features: * A new web build tool, Turbopack (Rust-based), which improves site build performance (at least 3x faster, according to official data). * Simplified `next/link` syntax => it now renders its own `` tag, so you no longer need to wrap it in one. * A rewritten `next/image` component => it now uses the browser's native lazy loading. Older versions of Safari will fall back to preloading. The `layout` attribute has been removed, and the `alt` attribute is now mandatory. * `next/font` => makes it easier to load Google Fonts. * [Initial support for async Server Components](https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/579068537) * Fixes for various framework bugs. ## Testing Build Performance In my test of the site build (`npm run build`), the speed nearly doubled. Next.js 12 local build: 1 minute 40 seconds Next.js 13 local build: 56 seconds Upgrading to Next.js 13 brought a noticeable improvement in page rendering performance. ## Next Image ### New syntax for loading images. Every `Image` component now requires an `alt` prop, or it will throw an error. [New Image component examples](https://github.com/vercel/next.js/tree/canary/examples/image-component/pages) ``` import Image from 'next/image'; ``` ### However, since Next.js 13 removed the `layout` prop from `Image`, the layout on many of our pages broke. Most cases can be fixed by following the example below. ``` ``` ### New syntax for responsive images ``` ``` ### If you can't upgrade right away, you can still use the old Image component ``` import Image from next/legacy/image ``` ## `next/link` Changes ### Old syntax ``` About ``` ### New syntax ``` About ``` P.S. You can modify your `next.config.js` to keep the Next.js 12 syntax (not recommended, as the new version fixes link-related bugs). ``` experimental: { newNextLinkBehavior: false, }, ``` --- ## About this article and its author Originally published on [Mark Ku's Tech Notes](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/post/next-13-upgrade) License: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original ### About the author **[Mark Ku](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku)** — Software Solution Provider - 10+ years senior software engineer, now an AI Builder - Focused on large-platform architecture — North-American e-commerce, AI SaaS subscription billing - Combining AI Agents and automation to build evolvable product foundations ### Free tools built by the author All of these are free to use: - [Free PDF Sign Tool](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/pdf-sign): Online PDF sign tool — draw, type, or upload a signature, then drag, resize, and download. 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No sign-up, nothing uploaded to a server, and mermaid.live share links work as-is. - [React Intl Phone Number](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-intl-phone-number): react-intl-phone-number is an open-source React component: framework-agnostic and antd-free, with E.164 in/out, a searchable flag / country-code dropdown, configurable validation levels (strict / mobile-strict / loose), themeable CSS, and i18n — phone logic powered by google-libphonenumber. Lightweight and fully typed. Free and open source (MIT). - [Uptime Kuma Cluster](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/uptime-kuma-cluster): Turn single-node Uptime Kuma into a highly available cluster: OpenResty + Lua smart load balancing, shared MariaDB state, health checks and automatic failover, plus cluster-management REST APIs. One Docker Compose command to start. 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