Astro 4.7 is now available! This release includes extensive improvements to the API for making toolbar apps, more ways to keep your Astro project up to date, and more.

Full release highlights include:

• Significant improvements to the Dev Toolbar API
• Update checker
• allowJs: true for strictest TypeScript preset

To upgrade an existing project, use the automated @astrojs/upgrade CLI tool. Alternatively, upgrade manually by running the upgrade command for your package manager:

# Recommended:
npx @astrojs/upgrade
# Manual:
npm install astro@latest
pnpm upgrade astro --latest
yarn upgrade astro --latest

Astro 4.7 includes considerable improvements to the API for making toolbar apps. One of our main goal this release was to make it easier to build and maintain toolbar apps, and we are excited to bring you:

• a defineToolbarApp() helper that makes it easier to define toolbar apps. This pattern should feel familiar as it is similar to defineConfig() in your Astro config and defineMiddleware() for defining middleware.
• new app and server helpers to make it easier to send and receive messages between the toolbar and the server.
• a brand new starter project for building toolbar apps. This will help you get started building your own toolbar apps in no time. Run npm create astro@latest -- --template toolbar-app and start building your toolbar app.
• a recipe guiding you step-by-step through building your own toolbar app from scratch, including how to build your app using JSX frameworks like React or Preact.
• revamped documentation of the Dev Toolbar App API, with all examples updated to show using the new methods.

We hope you’ll enjoy these improvements and we can’t wait to see what you build with them!

Update checker

Starting from this release, Astro will now check for updates when you run the dev server. If a new version is available, you’ll see a message in the terminal with instructions on how to update and in the dev toolbar.

To avoid spamming you with too many update messages, Astro will only check for updates once every 10 days and will only show the message if you’re multiple versions behind. You can disable this feature by running astro preferences disable checkUpdates or setting the ASTRO_DISABLE_UPDATE_CHECK environment variable to false.

allowJs: true for strictest TypeScript preset

Our strictest TypeScript preset previously included allowJs: false, to disable the use of .js files completely. This proved to be a bit too strict for the average user and often caused confusion. We’ve now changed this to allowJs: true, which allows you to use .js files in your project.

This should not be a breaking change, but if you’re using the strictest preset and would like to still disable .js files, set allowJs: false manually in your tsconfig.json.

Bug Fixes

As usual, Astro 4.7 includes more bug fixes and smaller improvements that couldn’t make it into this post! Check out the full release notes to learn more.