javascript 30 lines · 6 steps

Managing focus on route change in React

A wrapper that moves keyboard focus to the page heading and updates the document title every time the route changes.

Explained by highlit
React Intermediate accessibility focus-management routing side-effects hooks
1import { useEffect, useRef } from "react";
2import { useLocation } from "react-router-dom";
3 
4export function RouteFocus({ title, children }) {
5 const headingRef = useRef(null);
6 const location = useLocation();
7 
8 useEffect(() => {
9 const heading = headingRef.current;
10 if (!heading) return;
11 
12 const timer = window.setTimeout(() => {
13 heading.focus();
14 heading.scrollIntoView({ block: "start" });
15 }, 0);
16 
17 document.title = title ? `${title} \u2013 Acme` : "Acme";
18 
19 return () => window.clearTimeout(timer);
20 }, [location.pathname, title]);
21 
22 return (
23 <main>
24 <h1 ref={headingRef} tabIndex={-1} className="page-title">
25 {title}
26 </h1>
27 {children}
28 </main>
29 );
30}
01 / 01
STEP 01

Walkthrough

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Three takeaways
  1. 1Moving focus to a heading on navigation keeps screen-reader and keyboard users oriented after client-side route changes.
  2. 2A tabIndex of -1 makes an element programmatically focusable without inserting it into the tab order.
  3. 3Cleaning up timers in the effect's return prevents stale callbacks from firing after unmount or a rapid re-navigation.

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