Next.js: Instant Navigation Gets Production-Ready Testing Tools
Today we're diving into 20 merged PRs and 30 commits that are all about making Next.js faster and more reliable. The standout story is the new @next/playwright package that makes testing instant navigation a breeze, plus some massive performance wins in Turbopack's database operations. We're also seeing solid improvements to build optimization and test reliability across the board.
Duration: PT4M23S
Episode overview
This episode is a short developer briefing from Next.js.
It explains recent repository work in plain language.
- Show: Next.js
- Published: 2026-02-25T11:16:15Z
- Audio duration: PT4M23S
Transcript excerpt
This excerpt keeps the crawler page concise. Listen to the episode or use the RSS feed for the full update.
Hey there, amazing developers! Welcome back to another episode of the Next.js podcast. I'm your host, and wow - do we have a packed show for you today, February 25th, 2026. Grab your favorite coffee because we're diving into 20 merged pull requests and 30 additional commits that are genuinely exciting.
Let's start with today's headline story, and this one's really cool. Andrew Clark just shipped something I think you're all going to love - a brand new @next/playwright package that includes an instant navigation testing helper. Now, if you've been working with instant navigation features, you know testing them can…
Speaking of instant navigation, there were some solid fixes too. Andrew also tackled a sneaky bug where params were leaking into the instant navigation shell during dev mode. The fix ensures that when the instant lock is active, params suspend correctly just like cookies and search parameters do. It's one of those…
Now, let's talk performance because Luke Sandberg has been absolutely crushing it with some Turbopack optimizations that are genuinely impressive. The first big win is making compression optional in SST files. Here's the thing - not all data compresses well,…
But…
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Nearby episodes from Next.js
- The Great Cleanup & Performance Push
- Developer Experience Gets a Major Polish
- Infrastructure Week - Testing, Docker, and Developer Experience
- Instant Navigation Gets Real + Turbopack Performance Wins
- Bug Hunt Success - Fixing Cache Mysteries and Build Crashes
- Instant Navigation & Image Cache Revolution
- Router Resilience and Developer Experience Wins
- Pipelining Performance and AI Agent Tooling