Visual Editing with Next.js App Router and Sanity Studio

This guide deliberately focuses on the experience of manually creating a new Next.js 14 application and creating a Sanity project with an embedded Studio.

All the instructions below could also be adapted to an existing Next.js application.

• Need reference code sooner? The final code created in this Guide is available as a repository on GitHub.
• Looking for a more complete example? The Next.js Personal Website template has an example schema and Visual Editing already set up and can be instantly deployed to Vercel.
• TypeScript is not required. The code examples in this guide are all in TypeScript; However, TypeScript is not necessary for any of this to work. You must remove the types from these examples if you work with plain JavaScript.
• Embedded Studio is not required. For convenience, you'll embed a Studio inside the Next.js application, but you could do all this with the Studio as a separate application.next

• You already have a Sanity account
• You have some familiarity with both Sanity Studio and Next.js
• You are reasonably confident with JavaScript in general and React in particular.

The following terms describe the functions that combine to create an interactive live preview, known as Visual Editing.

Visual Editing can be enabled on any hosting platform or front end framework.

• Perspectives modify queries to return either draft or published content. These are especially useful for server-side fetching to display draft content on the initial load when previewing drafts.
• Content Source Maps aren't something you'll need to interact with directly, but they are used by Stega encoding when enabled. They are an extra response from the Content Lake that notes the full path of every field of returned content.
• Stega encoding is when the Sanity Client takes Content Source Maps and combines every field of returned content with an invisible string of characters which contains the full path from the content to the field within its source document.
• Overlays are created by a dedicated package that looks through the DOM for these stega encoded strings and creates clickable links to edit documents.
• Presentation is a plugin included with Sanity Studio to simplify displaying a front end inside an iframe with an adjacent document editor. It communicates directly with the front end instead of making round-trips to the Content Lake for faster live preview.
• Draft mode: A Next.js-specific way of enabling, checking, and disabling a global variable available during requests so that your application queries draft content.
  • In other frameworks, you might replace this with an environment variable, cookie, or session.

Create a new project using the command below. Default options such as TypeScript, Tailwind, and ESLint have been selected for you but could be removed if you have different preferences. Just know the code snippets in this guide may no longer be compatible.

# from the command line
npx create-next-app@latest sanity-nextjs-app --typescript --tailwind --eslint --app --src-dir --import-alias="@/*"

# enter the new project's directory
cd sanity-nextjs-app

# run the development server
npm run dev

Need more help? See the Next.js docs for getting started.

Visit http://localhost:3000 in your web browser, and you should see this landing screen to show it’s been installed correctly.

The default Next.js project home page comes with some code boilerplate. So that you can more easily see what’s Sanity and what’s Next.js – you will remove almost all of it.

First, update the home page route file to simplify it greatly:

// ./src/app/page.tsx

export default function Page() {
  return (
    <main className="flex items-center justify-center min-h-screen">
      Populate me with Sanity Content
    </main>
  )
}

Second, update the globals.css file to just Tailwind utilities:

/* ./src/app/globals.css */

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

Now, our Next.js app at http://localhost:3000 should look much simpler:

Update nextjs.config.mjs to include some features you'll need later. One for using images from Sanity's CDN, the other to help protect your token to only be rendered server-side.

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
  images: {
    remotePatterns: [
      {
        protocol: "https",
        hostname: "cdn.sanity.io",
      },
    ],
  },
  experimental: {
    taint: true,
  },
  // ...other config settings
};

export default nextConfig;

It's possible to create a new – or connect an existing – Sanity project and configure a Studio inside a Next.js application!

Run the following command from inside the same ./nextjs-app directory you created for your Next.js application and follow the prompts:

npx sanity@latest init --env --create-project "Next.js Live Preview" --dataset production

> Would you like to add configuration files for a Sanity project in this Next.js folder?
Yes

> Do you want to use TypeScript?
Yes

> Would you like an embedded Sanity Studio?
Yes

> Would you like to use the Next.js app directory for routes? 
Yes

> What route do you want to use for the Studio?
/studio

> Select project template to use 
Blog (schema)

> Would you like to add the project ID and dataset to your .env file?
Yes

Now your Next.js application should contain some Sanity-specific files, including a .env file with your Sanity project ID and dataset name

Check to see that this file exists with values from your new project.

# ./.env.local

NEXT_PUBLIC_SANITY_PROJECT_ID="your-project-id"
NEXT_PUBLIC_SANITY_DATASET="production"

If this file is named .env, rename it to .env.local and ensure it does not get checked into git.

While these two values are not considered "secrets," you will add one later in this guide. It's best practice never to check .env files into your version control platform.

Visit http://localhost:3000/studio to see your new Sanity project's Studio.

• You may need to restart your development environment.
• You may also need to follow the prompts to add a CORS origin and log in.

Once logged in, your Studio should look like this with a basic schema to create blog posts.

Create and publish a few posts so that you have content to query.

Server-side fetching of content will require a token in order to enable stega encoding.

Visit your Studio at http://localhost:3000/studio, and from the top right in your user icon, click Manage project.

Navigate to the API tab, and under Tokens, add a new token. Give it viewer permissions and save.

Open your .env.local file and add the token on a new line as SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN

# ./.env.local

NEXT_PUBLIC_SANITY_PROJECT_ID="your-project-id"
NEXT_PUBLIC_SANITY_DATASET="production"

# 👇 add this line
SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN="your-new-token"

Create a file to store, protect, and export this token:

// ./src/sanity/lib/token.ts

import 'server-only'

import { experimental_taintUniqueValue } from 'react'

export const token = process.env.SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN

if (!token) {
  throw new Error('Missing SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN')
}

experimental_taintUniqueValue(
  'Do not pass the Sanity API read token to the client.',
  process,
  token,
)

Create a new file to store the GROQ queries you'll use in the Next.js application:

// ./src/sanity/lib/queries.ts

import { defineQuery } from "next-sanity";

export const POSTS_QUERY =
  defineQuery(`*[_type == "post" && defined(slug.current)][0...12]{
  _id, title, slug
}`);

export const POST_QUERY =
  defineQuery(`*[_type == "post" && slug.current == $slug][0]{
  title, body, mainImage
}`);

You can use Sanity TypeGen to generate TypeScript types for your schema types and GROQ queries from inside your Next.js application.

Run the following command in your terminal to create a schema.json file at the root of your project.

# Run this each time your schema types change
npx sanity@latest schema extract

Run the following command in your terminal to generate TypeScript types and create a sanity.types.ts file at the root of your project.

# Run this each time your schema types or GROQ queries change
npx sanity@latest typegen generate

This will create Types for query results based on any GROQ queries it finds with either the groq template literal or defineQuery helper function.

Data fetching with Sanity is typically done with Sanity Client, and one has been configured for you already. However, to dynamically configure it for Next.js draftMode and caching, it is useful to wrap it in a helper function that sets some sensible defaults.

Update the file that was created for you to prepare a Sanity Client to export sanityFetch().

// ./src/sanity/lib/client.ts

import "server-only";

import { createClient, QueryOptions, type QueryParams } from "next-sanity";
import { draftMode } from "next/headers";

import { apiVersion, dataset, projectId } from "../env";
import { token } from "./token";

export const client = createClient({
  projectId,
  dataset,
  apiVersion, // https://www.sanity.io/docs/api-versioning
  useCdn: true, // Set to false if statically generating pages, using ISR or tag-based revalidation
  stega: {
    enabled: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_VERCEL_ENV === "preview",
    studioUrl: "/studio",
  },
});

export async function sanityFetch<const QueryString extends string>({
  query,
  params = {},
  revalidate = 60, // default revalidation time in seconds
  tags = [],
}: {
  query: QueryString;
  params?: QueryParams;
  revalidate?: number | false;
  tags?: string[];
}) {
  const isDraftMode = draftMode().isEnabled;

  if (isDraftMode && !token) {
    throw new Error("Missing environment variable SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN");
  }

  const queryOptions: QueryOptions = {};
  let maybeRevalidate = revalidate;

  if (isDraftMode) {
    queryOptions.token = token;
    queryOptions.perspective = "previewDrafts";
    queryOptions.stega = true;

    maybeRevalidate = 0; // Do not cache in Draft Mode
  } else if (tags.length) {
    maybeRevalidate = false; // Cache indefinitely if tags supplied
  }
  
  return client.fetch(query, params, {
    ...queryOptions,
    next: {
      revalidate: maybeRevalidate,
      tags,
    },
  });
}

Create a new file with a component that will render all of your posts on the home page:

// ./src/components/Posts.tsx

import { POSTS_QUERYResult } from "../../sanity.types";

export function Posts({ posts }: { posts: POSTS_QUERYResult }) {
  return (
    <ul className="container mx-auto grid grid-cols-1 divide-y divide-blue-100">
      {posts.map((post) => (
        <li key={post._id}>
          <a
            className="block p-4 hover:bg-blue-50"
            href={`/posts/${post?.slug?.current}`}
          >
            {post?.title}
          </a>
        </li>
      ))}
    </ul>
  );
}

We're ready to fetch content after some housekeeping.

Create a new folder called (blog) inside your app folder. This "route group" enables having distinct layouts for the studio and the rest of the website.

Move the page.tsx file into the new (blog) folder.

Update your home page route now to import the sanityFetch function and add your POSTS_QUERY to it load content on this route:

// ./src/app/(blog)/page.tsx

import { Posts } from "@/components/Posts";
import { sanityFetch } from "@/sanity/lib/client";
import { POSTS_QUERY } from "@/sanity/lib/queries";

export default async function Page() {
  const posts = await sanityFetch({
    query: POSTS_QUERY,
  });

  return <Posts posts={posts} />;
}

Open http://localhost:3000 now. The home page should now show all of your published blog posts.

You now have:

• Created a new Next.js application
• Created a new Sanity project
• An embedded Sanity Studio in your application at /studio
• A home page that displays published blog posts fetched by
• A configured Sanity Client wrapped with a sanityFetch() function

Now, you'll toggle Next.js' built-in "draft mode" to query draft content and reveal live-as-you-type updates inside the Presentation tool.

To enable (and disable!) Visual Editing, you will need:

• A way to activate (and deactivate) "draft mode" for your production front end, but only for authenticated users
• The Presentation tool for Sanity Studio, where you get the side-by-side view with the front end and the relevant content forms to edit the content in real-time

Create a new app/layout.tsx file the (blog) folder and import the <VisualEditing /> component and have it conditionally render when draftMode is enabled.

// ./src/app/(blog)/layout.tsx

import { VisualEditing } from "next-sanity";
import { draftMode } from "next/headers";

export default function RootLayout({
  children,
}: Readonly<{
  children: React.ReactNode;
}>) {
  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <body>
        {draftMode().isEnabled && (
          <a
            className="fixed right-0 bottom-0 bg-blue-500 text-white p-4 m-4"
            href="/api/draft-mode/disable"
          >
            Disable preview mode
          </a>
        )}
        {children}
        {draftMode().isEnabled && <VisualEditing />}
      </body>
    </html>
  );
}

This component handles hydrating the page with draft documents as edits are made. The code example above also adds a button to disable draft mode.

Create a new API route that the Presentation tool will use to activate draft mode.

// ./src/app/api/draft-mode/enable/route.ts

import { validatePreviewUrl } from "@sanity/preview-url-secret";
import { draftMode } from "next/headers";
import { NextRequest, NextResponse } from "next/server";

import { client } from "@/sanity/lib/client";
import { token } from "@/sanity/lib/token";

const clientWithToken = client.withConfig({ token });

export async function GET(request: NextRequest) {
  if (!process.env.SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN) {
    return new Response("Missing environment variable SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN", {
      status: 500,
    });
  }

  const { isValid, redirectTo = "/" } = await validatePreviewUrl(
    clientWithToken,
    request.url
  );

  if (!isValid) {
    return new Response("Invalid secret", { status: 401 });
  }

  draftMode().enable();
  return NextResponse.redirect(new URL(redirectTo, request.url));
}

To secure preview mode, the Presentation tool passes a secret from the dataset along in the request, which this route will validate.

Create another API route to disable draft mode:

// ./src/app/api/draft-mode/disable/route.ts

import { draftMode } from "next/headers";
import { NextRequest, NextResponse } from "next/server";

export function GET(request: NextRequest) {
  draftMode().disable();
  return NextResponse.redirect(new URL("/", request.url));
}

Now you have all the pieces assembled to fetch drafts, show real-time updates, and include stega encoding for interactive live previews – you'll need to set up the Presentation tool to show it in action.

For the closest relationship between your Next.js application and your Sanity Studio, install and configure the Presentation plugin. It will handle requesting a URL to enable draft mode, as well as the ability to navigate and edit the website from an interactive preview rather than a separate tab or window.

Update your sanity.config.ts file to import the Presentation tool.

// ./sanity.config.ts

// ...all other imports
import { presentationTool } from 'sanity/presentation'

export default defineConfig({
  // ... all other config settings
  plugins: [
    // ...all other plugins
    presentationTool({
      previewUrl: {
        previewMode: {
          enable: '/api/draft-mode/enable',
        },
      },
    }),
  ],
})

Notice how the plugin's configuration includes the route you just created. Presentation will visit this route first, confirm an automatically generated secret from the dataset, and activate draft mode in the Next.js application if successful.

You should now see the Presentation tool in the top toolbar of the Studio or by visiting http://localhost:3000/studio/presentation

The home page now displays a list of published blog posts.

If you click on one of the post titles, you'll be taken to the post document focusing on the title field. You can edit and see the updates happening in real-time on the front end.

Now at http://localhost:3000/studio/presentation the Presentation tool should show:

• Both draft and published documents.
• Clickable links on the title of each post to edit that document.
• Real-time changes when editing the title of any post.

Success!

When you click on any of these posts (with the Edit mode off), they return a 404 error. You'll need to create a route and a component for individual posts.

Create a new route with a slug parameter passed into the query:

// ./app/(blog)/posts/[slug]/page.tsx

import { QueryParams } from "next-sanity";
import { notFound } from "next/navigation";

import { POSTS_QUERY, POST_QUERY } from "@/sanity/lib/queries";

import { client, sanityFetch } from "@/sanity/lib/client";
import { Post } from "@/components/Post";

export async function generateStaticParams() {
  const posts = await client.fetch(
    POSTS_QUERY,
    {},
    { perspective: "published" }
  );

  return posts.map((post) => ({
    slug: post?.slug?.current,
  }));
}

export default async function Page({ params }: { params: QueryParams }) {
  const post = await sanityFetch({
    query: POST_QUERY,
    params,
  });
  if (!post) {
    return notFound();
  }
  return <Post post={post} />;
}

Create a component to display a single post:

// ./src/components/Post.tsx

import Image from "next/image";
import { PortableText } from "@portabletext/react";

import { urlFor } from "@/sanity/lib/image";
import { POST_QUERYResult } from "../../sanity.types";
import Link from "next/link";

export function Post({ post }: { post: POST_QUERYResult }) {
  const { title, mainImage, body } = post || {};

  return (
    <main className="container mx-auto prose prose-lg p-4">
      {title ? <h1>{title}</h1> : null}
      {mainImage?.asset?._ref ? (
        <Image
          className="float-left m-0 w-1/3 mr-4 rounded-lg"
          src={urlFor(mainImage?.asset?._ref).width(300).height(300).url()}
          width={300}
          height={300}
          alt={title || ""}
        />
      ) : null}
      {body ? <PortableText value={body} /> : null}
      <hr />
      <Link href="/">&larr; Return home</Link>
    </main>
  );
}

On single post pages, the Portable Text field from the Studio is being rendered into HTML by the <PortableText /> component.

Install the Tailwind CSS Typography package to quickly apply beautiful default styling:

npm install -D @tailwindcss/typography

Update your tailwind.config.js file's plugins to include it:

// ./tailwind.config.ts

module.exports = {
  // ...other settings
  plugins: [require('@tailwindcss/typography')],
}

This package styles the prose class names in the <Post /> component.

You should now be able to click into individual posts and see text fields, portable text, and images rendered beautifully. Inside Presentation, you should be able to make content edits and see them update as you type!

The content of a document can be used in multiple places. In this simple example, even a post’s title is shown both on the individual post route and in the post listing on the home page. The Visual Editing mode enables preview across the whole site.

To show where its content is used and can be previewed within a document form, you must pass a configuration that tells the presentation tool where it can open any document.

Create a new file for the resolve option in the Presentation plugin options:

// ./src/sanity/presentation/resolve.ts

import {
  defineLocations,
  PresentationPluginOptions,
} from "sanity/presentation";

export const resolve: PresentationPluginOptions["resolve"] = {
  locations: {
    // Add more locations for other post types
    post: defineLocations({
      select: {
        title: "title",
        slug: "slug.current",
      },
      resolve: (doc) => ({
        locations: [
          {
            title: doc?.title || "Untitled",
            href: `/posts/${doc?.slug}`,
          },
          { title: "Home", href: `/` },
        ],
      }),
    }),
  },
};

Update your sanity.config.ts file to import the locate function into the Presentation plugin.

// ./sanity.config.ts

// Add this import
import { resolve } from '@/sanity/presentation/resolve'

export default defineConfig({
  // ...all other settings

  plugins: [
    presentationTool({
      resolve,
      previewUrl: {
        draftMode: {
          enable: '/api/draft',
        },
      },
    }),
    // ..all other plugins
  ],
})

You should now see the locations at the top of all post type documents:

And that's it! You can now follow these patterns when you extend your blog with category and author pages.

Sanity Composable Content Cloud is the headless CMS that gives you (and your team) a content backend to drive websites and applications with modern tooling. It offers a real-time editing environment for content creators that’s easy to configure but designed to be customized with JavaScript and React when needed. With the hosted document store, you query content freely and easily integrate with any framework or data source to distribute and enrich content.

Sanity scales from weekend projects to enterprise needs and is used by companies like Puma, AT&T, Burger King, Tata, and Figma.