🏇 React 19 Update: 🚀 Goodbye forwardRef, Hello Simpler Ref Management! (2025) 🏃

React 19 brings a significant update that simplifies ref handling: the ability to pass refs directly as props.

React 19 brings a significant update that simplifies ref handling: the ability to pass refs directly as props. This eliminates the need for forwardRef, a utility traditionally required to forward refs to child components in functional components.

This change is more than just a convenience — it’s a step towards cleaner, more maintainable code.

What Has Changed?
In previous versions of React, forwardRef was used to manage refs:

import { useRef, forwardRef } from 'react'

const Input = forwardRef((props, ref) => (
  <input {...props} ref={ref} />
))
export default function App() {
  const inputRef = useRef()
  return <Input ref={inputRef} />
}

With React 19, the forwardRef boilerplate can be skipped entirely and refs can be passed as regular props:

import { useRef } from 'react'

const Input = (props, ref) =>…