Intercepting Routes

Intercepting routes allows you to load a route from another part of your application within the current layout. This routing paradigm can be useful when you want to display the content of a route without the user switching to a different context.

For example, when clicking on a photo in a feed, you can display the photo in a modal, overlaying the feed. In this case, Next.js intercepts the /photo/123 route, masks the URL, and overlays it over /feed.

However, when navigating to the photo by clicking a shareable URL or by refreshing the page, the entire photo page should render instead of the modal. No route interception should occur.

Convention

Intercepting routes can be defined with the (..) convention, which is similar to relative path convention ../ but for segments.

You can use:

• (.) to match segments on the same level
• (..) to match segments one level above
• (..)(..) to match segments two levels above
• (...) to match segments from the root app directory

For example, you can intercept the photo segment from within the feed segment by creating a (..)photo directory.

Note that the (..) convention is based on route segments, not the file-system.

Examples

Modals

Intercepting Routes can be used together with Parallel Routes to create modals.

Using this pattern to create modals overcomes some common challenges when working with modals, by allowing you to:

• Make the modal content shareable through a URL
• Preserve context when the page is refreshed, instead of closing the modal
• Close the modal on backwards navigation rather than going to the previous route
• Reopen the modal on forwards navigation

In the above example, the path to the photo segment can use the (..) matcher since @modal is a slot and not a segment. This means that the photo route is only one segment level higher, despite being two file-system levels higher.

Other examples could include opening a login modal in a top navbar while also having a dedicated /login page, or opening a shopping cart in a side modal.

View an example of modals with Intercepted and Parallel Routes.