Core 2 is included in the Javascript SDK starting with version 5. This new version ships with an improved design and UX for its built-in components, no "flash of white page" when authenticating, and a variety of smaller DX improvements and housekeeping items. Each of the potentially breaking changes are detailed in this guide, below.
By the end of this guide, you'll have successfully upgraded your JS project to use @clerk/clerk-js v5. You'll learn how to update your dependencies, resolve breaking changes, and find deprecations. Step-by-step instructions will lead you through the process.
Before upgrading, it's highly recommended that you update your Clerk SDKs to the latest Core 1 version (npm i @clerk/clerk-js@4). Some changes required for Core 2 SDKs can be applied incrementally to the v5 release, which should contribute to a smoother upgrading experience. After updating, look out for deprecation messages in your terminal and browser console. By resolving these deprecations you'll be able to skip many breaking changes from Core 2.
Additionally, some of the minimum version requirements for some base dependencies have been updated such that versions that are no longer supported or are at end-of-life are no longer guaranteed to work correctly with Clerk.
Whenever you feel ready, go ahead and install the latest version of any Clerk SDKs you are using. Make sure that you are prepared to patch some breaking changes before your app will work properly, however. The commands below demonstrate how to install the latest version.
Clerk now provides a @clerk/upgrade CLI tool that you can use to ease the upgrade process. The tool will scan your codebase and produce a list of changes you'll need to apply to your project. It should catch the vast majority of the changes needed for a successful upgrade to any SDK including Core 2. This can save you a lot of time reading through changes that don't apply to your project.
To run the CLI tool, navigate to your project and run it in the terminal:
npm
yarn
pnpm
bun
terminal
npx@clerk/upgrade--from=core-1
terminal
yarndlx@clerk/upgrade--from=core-1
terminal
pnpmdlx@clerk/upgrade--from=core-1
terminal
bundlx@clerk/upgrade--from=core-1
If you are having trouble with npx, it's also possible to install directly with npm i @clerk/upgrade -g, and can then be run with the clerk-upgrade command.
The new version ships with improved design and UX across all of Clerk's UI components. If you have used the appearance prop or tokens for a custom theme, you will likely need to make some adjustments to ensure your styling is still looking great. If you're using the localization prop you will likely need to make adjustments to account for added or removed localization keys.
In Core 2, defining redirect URLs for after sign-up, sign-in, or sign-out via the Clerk Dashboard has been removed. Previously, the "Paths" section in the Clerk Dashboard included "Component paths" where URLs could be defined, accompanied by a deprecation warning. This functionality is now removed, and specifying redirect paths via the dashboard is no longer supported.
If you need to pass a redirect URL for after sign-up, sign-in, or sign-out, there are several ways to achieve this, including environment variables, middleware, or passing them directly to the relevant components.
As part of this change, the default URL for each of these props has been set to /, so if you are passing / explicitly to any one of the above props, that line is no longer necessary and can be removed.
This section refers to afterSignXUrl where X could be Up or In depending on the context.
All afterSignXUrl props and CLERK_AFTER_SIGN_X_URL environment variables have been deprecated, and should be replaced by one of the following options:
CLERK_SIGN_X_FORCE_REDIRECT_URL / signXForceRedirectUrl – If set, Clerk will always redirect to provided URL, regardless of what page the user was on before. Use this option with caution, as it will interrupt the user's flow by taking them away from the page they were on before.
CLERK_SIGN_X_FALLBACK_REDIRECT_URL / signXFallbackRedirectUrl – If set, this will mirror the previous behavior, only redirecting to the provided URL if there is no redirect_url in the querystring.
In general, use the environment variables over the props.
Warning
If neither value is set, Clerk will redirect to the redirect_url if present, otherwise it will redirect to /.
To retain the current behavior of your app without any changes, you can switch afterSignXUrl with signXFallbackRedirectUrl as such:
To make redirect behavior more clear and predictable, Clerk is changing the way "after sign up/in url"s and redirect url props are handled in Core 2.
The afterSignXUrl props and CLERK_AFTER_SIGN_X_URL environment variables behave differently based on how a user reaches a sign up/in page:
Via a link – When users visit a sign up/in page via a link, Clerk sets the previous page URL to a redirect_url querystring. When done signing up/in, these users are redirected to the previous page, and the CLERK_AFTER_SIGN_X_URL variables are ignored. This is a common sign up/in flow pattern that interrupts the user's navigation the least.
Direct navigation – When users navigate directly to a sign up/in page, no value is set to redirect_url and the appropriate CLERK_AFTER_SIGN_X_URL is used.
Overall, this behavior is unintuitive and doesn't give a way to force a redirect after sign up/in, so the behavior is changing.
In the previous version of Clerk's SDKs, if you decode the session token that Clerk returns from the server, you'll currently find an orgs claim on it. It lists all the orgs associated with the given user. Now, Clerk returns the org_id, org_slug, and org_role of the active organization.
The orgs claim was part of the JwtPayload. Here are a few examples of where the JwtPayload could be found.
If you would like to have your JWT return all of the user's organizations, you can create a custom JWT template in your dashboard. Add { "orgs": "user.organizations" } to it.
On components like <SignIn /> you can define the props routing and path. routing can be set to 'hash' | 'path' and describes the routing strategy that should be used. path defines where the component is mounted when routing="path" is used. Learn more about Clerk routing.
In Core 2, the defaultrouting strategy has become 'path'. Unless you change the routing prop, you'll need to define the path prop. The affected components are:
<SignIn />
<SignUp />
<UserProfile />
<CreateOrganization />
<OrganizationProfile />
Here's how you'd use the components going forward:
There are a number of Clerk primitives that contain images, and previously they each had different property names, like avatarUrl, logoUrl, profileImageUrl, etc. In order to promote consistency and make it simpler for developers to know where to find associated images, all image properties are now named imageUrl. See the list below for all affected classes:
The logoUrl property of any Organization object has been changed to imageUrl.
The profileImageUrl property of any User object has been changed to imageUrl.
There were some changes made to pagination-related arguments passed into functions, in order to make it more clear how to control paginated results. See each function impacted by these changes below:
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
const { data } =awaitorganization.getRoles({- limit:10,+ pageSize:10,- offset:10,+ initialPage:2,})
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
const { data } =awaitorganization.getMemberships({- limit:10,+ pageSize:10,- offset:10,+ initialPage:2,})
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
const { data } =awaitorganization.getDomains({- limit:10,+ pageSize:10,- offset:10,+ initialPage:2,})
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
const { data } =awaitorganization.getInvitations({- limit:10,+ pageSize:10,- offset:10,+ initialPage:2,})
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
const { data } =awaitorganization.getMembershipRequests({- limit:10,+ pageSize:10,- offset:10,+ initialPage:2,})
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
const { data } =awaituser.getOrganizationInvitations({- limit:10,+ pageSize:10,- offset:10,+ initialPage:2,})
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
const { data } =awaituser.getOrganizationSuggestions({- limit:10,+ pageSize:10,- offset:10,+ initialPage:2,})
There have been a couple changes to the pagination arguments that can be passed into this function - limit has been renamed to pageSize, and offset has been renamed to initialPage. This will help to make it more clear and simple to reason about pagination control. Example of how changes might look below:
const { data } =awaituser.getOrganizationMemberships({- limit:10,+ pageSize:10,- offset:10,+ initialPage:2,})
There have been changes to return signatures for some functions. Since the Clerk API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily. This change also aligns the response shape with what is returned from the Clerk Backend API. Each impacted function is listed below, along with code examples:
The response payload of Users.getOrganizationMembershipList was changed as part of the core 2 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since Backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the Backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The response payload of Users.getOrganizationInvitationList was changed as part of the core 2 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since Backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the Backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The return type for this function was previously [Items] but has now been updated to { data: [Items], totalCount: number }. Since the Clerk API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily. A before/after code example can be seen below:
The return type for this function was previously [Items] but has now been updated to { data: [Items], totalCount: number }. Since the Clerk API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily. A before/after code example can be seen below:
The response payload of Users.getOrganizationList was changed as part of the core 2 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since Backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the Backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The return type for this function was previously [Items] but has now been updated to { data: [Items], totalCount: number }. Since the Clerk API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily. A before/after code example can be seen below:
The response payload of Invitations.getInvitationList was changed as part of the core 2 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since Backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the Backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The response payload of Sessions.getSessionList was changed as part of the core 2 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since Backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the Backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The response payload of Users.getUserList was changed as part of the core 2 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since Backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the Backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The response payload of AllowlistIdentifiers.getAllowlistIdentifierList was changed as part of the core 2 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since Backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the Backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The response payload of Clients.getClientList was changed as part of the core 2 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since Backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the Backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The response payload of RedirectUrls.getRedirectUrlList was changed as part of the core 2 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since Backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the Backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
The response payload of Users.getUserOauthAccessToken was changed as part of the core 2 release. Rather than directly returning data, the return signature is now { data, totalCount }. Since Backend API responses are paginated, the totalCount property is helpful in determining the total number of items in the response easily, and this change in the backend SDK aligns the response shape with what the Backend API returns directly.
Here's an example of how the response shape would change with this modification:
As part of this major version, a number of previously deprecated props, arguments, methods, etc. have been removed. Additionally there have been some changes to things that are only used internally, or only used very rarely. It's highly unlikely that any given app will encounter any of these items, but they are all breaking changes, so they have all been documented below.
Note
For this section more than any other one, use the CLI upgrade tool (npx @clerk/upgrade). Changes in this
section are very unlikely to appear in your codebase, the tool will save time looking for them.
If you are updating a user's password via the User.update method, it must be changed to User.updatePassword instead. This method will require the current password as well as the desired new password. We made this update to improve the security of password changes. Example below:
The experimental property Clerk.experimental_canUseCaptcha has been removed. There is no replacement for this functionality currently. If this is problematic for your application, contact support!
The experimental property Clerk.experimental_captchaURL has been removed. There is no replacement for this functionality currently. If this is problematic for your application, contact support!
The experimental property Clerk.experimental_captchaSiteKey has been removed. There is no replacement for this functionality currently. If this is problematic for your application, contact support!
The Clerk.__unstable__invitationUpdate experimental property has been removed, and has no current replacement. If this is an issue in your codebase, contact support!
The Clerk.__unstable__membershipUpdate experimental property has been removed, and has no current replacement. If this is an issue in your codebase, contact support!
The param redirect_url of User.createExternalAccount has been updated to redirectUrl. This is a simple text replacement without any signature changes.
The generatedSignature param to Signup.attemptWeb3WalletVerification() has been removed. Instead, use the signature param. Note that this param takes a string, where the generatedSignature param took a function, so both key and value will need to change.
// befores.attemptWeb3WalletVerification({generatedSignature:async () =>'signatureString',})// afters.attemptWeb3WalletVerification({ signature:'signatureString' })// or, if you still need to fetch the signature asyncconstsignatureString=await (async () =>'signatureString')s.attemptWeb3WalletVerification({ signature: signatureString })
setSession should be replaced with setActive. The format of the parameters has changed slightly - setActive takes an object where setSession took params directly. The setActive function also can accept an organization param that is used to set the currently active organization. The return signature did not change. Read the API documentation for more detail. This function should be expected to be returned from one of the following Clerk hooks: useSessionList, useSignUp, or useSignIn. Some migration examples:
If you are using Clerk.addListener or OrganizationContext and utilizing either the lastOrganizationInvitation and/or lastOrganizationMember emitted events, these properties have been removed, as they were only relevant for internal use. We are not providing a way to backfill this functionality at the moment. If you are using it and this is an issue for you, contact support and we can find a way to resolve the issue!
The Clerk.redirectToHome method has been removed. If you are looking for a generic replacement for this method, you can instead use window.Clerk.redirectToAfterSignUp() or window.Clerk.redirectAfterSignIn().
To set the afterSignUpUrl or afterSignInUrl, you can:
If not using a react-based SDK, pass the values into Clerk.load as such: Clerk.load({ afterSignUpUrl: 'x', afterSignInUrl: 'y' })
If using a React-based SDK, pass the desired values into <ClerkProvider>.
If using the Next.js SDK, set with NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_SIGN_IN_FALLBACK_REDIRECT_URL or NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_SIGN_UP_FALLBACK_REDIRECT_URL
If using remix SDK, set with CLERK_SIGN_IN_FALLBACK_REDIRECT_URL or CLERK_SIGN_UP_FALLBACK_REDIRECT_URL
We have removed the Clerk.isReady() function - instead, use the Clerk.loaded property to check whether Clerk has completed loading.
The signOutCallback prop on the <SignOutButton /> component has been removed. Instead, you can use the redirectUrl prop. Example below:
The top level Clerk import was changed to a named export, like { Clerk }. This is just a name change and can be treated as a text replacement, no changes to the params or return types.