In most examples, to disable prefetching, they do so by disabling a specific link for prefetching, see the following example:

<Link href="/about" prefetch={false}>
  <a>About us</a>
</Link>

I want to set prefetch to false for the whole project. Are there settings for this in the next.config.js file?

How should I do this?

In most examples, to disable prefetching, they do so by disabling a specific link for prefetching, see the following example:

<Link href="/about" prefetch={false}>
  <a>About us</a>
</Link>

I want to set prefetch to false for the whole project. Are there settings for this in the next.config.js file?

How should I do this?

• javascript
• reactjs
• next.js

2 Answers 2

Unfortunately, it's not supported in Next.js to disable prefetch globally.

The first workaround

1. create a Babel plugin local to your project which adds prefetch={false} everywhere we use <Link /> from 'next/link'.

/**
 * Based on the docs at https://nextjs/docs/api-reference/next/link, the
 * only way to disable prefetching is to make sure every <Link /> has <Link
 * prefetch={false} />
 *
 * We don't want to create a wrapper Component or go around changing every
 * single <Link />, so we use this Babel Plugin to add them in at build-time.
 */
module.exports = function (babel) {
  const { types: t } = babel
  return {
    name: 'disable-link-prefetching',
    visitor: {
      JSXOpeningElement(path) {
        if (path.node.name.name === 'Link') {
          path.node.attributes.push(
            t.jSXAttribute(
              t.jSXIdentifier('prefetch'),
              t.JSXExpressionContainer(t.booleanLiteral(false)),
            ),
          )
        }
      },
    },
  }
}

2. Add/modify ./.babelrc to load your local plugin:

{
  "presets": ["next/babel"],
  "plugins": ["./babel/disable-nextjs-link-prefetching"]
}

The Second workaround

Create a custom link ponent and use prefetch={false} for it and use it instead of using the next/link directly.

import Link from 'next/link'

export default function MyLink(props) {
  // defaults prefetch to false if `prefetch` is not true
  return <Link {...props} prefetch={props.prefetch ?? false}>
}

Resource

In addition to @Mina answer, note that disable prefetching on <Link> ponent with prefetch props doesn't disable hover prefetching as mentionned in this github discussion: https://github./vercel/next.js/discussions/24437

As described on this discussion there is another workaround for globally disabling prefetching. This solution can be used for the entire website or only on a specific page.

To disable prefetching on entire website. Add following code to _app.tsx

const router = useRouter()
useEffect(() => {
  router.prefetch = async () => { }
}, [router])

to disable prefetching on specific page add following code on your page

const router = useRouter()

useEffect(() => {
  const prefetch = router.prefetch
  router.prefetch = async () => { }
  return () => { router.prefetch = prefetch }
}, [router])