My Experience Using dnd-kit in React and Next.js
For a long time, I avoided building drag-and-drop features in frontend projects 😅
Not because I did not need them.
Mostly because drag and drop always felt unnecessarily complicated.
When you think about implementing it, your brain immediately jumps to:
- animations
- sorting logic
- touch support
- accessibility
- performance
- state synchronization
and suddenly a simple UI interaction feels like a massive feature.
But recently, in one of my React and Next.js projects, I decided to finally try dnd-kit.
Honestly, it changed my perspective completely.
I used AI to help me with the initial setup and understanding some concepts like sortable contexts and drag events, but after that, working with the library felt surprisingly smooth.
And that's what impressed me most.
dnd-kit feels lightweight, modern, and flexible without becoming overwhelming.
It gives you the tools you need without forcing a huge architecture or complicated patterns on your app.
Things I Personally Liked About dnd-kit
- Very clean React-first API
- Lightweight and composable
- Works really well in React and Next.js projects
- Building sortable lists feels much simpler than expected
- Flexible enough for custom UI and interactions
- Good developer experience overall
Something Interesting I Noticed
When a library has a clean architecture and predictable patterns, AI becomes much more useful while learning it.
The generated examples were easier to understand, easier to debug, and easier to customize compared to many older drag-and-drop solutions.
If you are building things like:
- kanban boards
- sortable lists
- draggable cards
- dashboards
- reorderable tables
I definitely recommend taking a look at dnd-kit.
It ended up being much simpler and more enjoyable than I expected.