React Aurora Background

A lightweight, GPU-friendly aurora background for React.

Live demo • Installation • Usage • Props • Performance • Browser support • Upgrading from 1.x • Help • Contributing

Features

• One tiny WebGL shader instead of blurred DOM elements: smooth on phones, laptops stay quiet
• Rendered at a low resolution and scaled by the browser (an aurora is blurry anyway), at a capped frame rate
• Stops completely when it is off-screen, when the tab is hidden or when you pause it
• A still aurora for users who prefer reduced motion
• A CSS version rendered on the server: no flash before JavaScript runs, no hydration mismatch, and a fallback when WebGL is not available
• Works in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, on desktop and mobile (WebGL 2 or WebGL 1)
• Server rendering and Next.js App Router support (client component)
• React 18 and 19, ESM and CommonJS, TypeScript types included, no CSS files to import

Installation

npm install @nauverse/react-aurora-background

Usage

Wrap your content with the provider. It fills its parent (100% width and height), so give the parent a size:

import { AuroraBackgroundProvider } from "@nauverse/react-aurora-background";

export function Hero() {
  return (
    <div style={{ height: "100vh" }}>
      <AuroraBackgroundProvider>
        <h1>Hello aurora</h1>
      </AuroraBackgroundProvider>
    </div>
  );
}

Or place the aurora layer alone inside any positioned element:

import { AuroraBackground } from "@nauverse/react-aurora-background";

export function Card() {
  return (
    <div style={{ position: "relative", height: 300 }}>
      <AuroraBackground colors={["#ff6b6b", "#845ef7"]} numBubbles={3} />
      <p style={{ position: "relative" }}>Content on top</p>
    </div>
  );
}

Next.js and server rendering

The components are client components (the package starts with "use client"), so you can use them directly in App Router pages and layouts. On the server they render the still CSS aurora, and the animated version fades in once the page is interactive.

Props

Both components accept the same props (plus children for the provider):

Prop	Type	Default	Description
colors	Color[]	["#FC466B", "#3f5efb", "#F8FF00", "#3AD59F"]	The colors of the bubbles: any CSS color (hex, rgb(), hsl(), named colors, and in the browser also oklch(), color(), CSS variables like var(--brand) and currentColor). They repeat when there are more bubbles than colors.
numBubbles	2 to 9	4	The number of bubbles (color blobs).
animDuration	number	20	The duration of one animation cycle, in seconds.
blurAmount	number | string	"10vw"	How soft the bubbles are: a number of pixels or a CSS length ("80px", "10vw", "10vh", "20%" of the width, "5rem").
bgColor	Color	"#3f5efb"	The color behind the bubbles (any CSS color, it can be translucent or transparent).
useRandomness	boolean	false	Adds a small random variation to the size, the speed and the position of each bubble.
fps	number	30	The maximum frame rate (1 to 60). The aurora moves slowly, so 30 is smooth and uses half the energy of 60.
paused	boolean	false	Stops the animation. The current frame stays visible.
respectReducedMotion	boolean	true	Shows a still aurora when the user prefers reduced motion.
className	string		Extra class names for the container.
style	CSSProperties		Extra styles for the container.

Performance

Version 1 drew every bubble as a full-size element with a huge CSS blur() filter and animated its shape, so the browser recomputed large blurs on every frame. Version 2 draws the whole aurora with one small shader:

• Low resolution: at most 256 pixels on the longest side, scaled by the browser. The result looks the same because the aurora is blurry.
• Capped frame rate: 30 frames per second by default.
• No work when you can not see it: off-screen (IntersectionObserver), hidden tabs and paused stop the render loop.
• Low-power GPU: laptops with two GPUs keep using the integrated one.

Measured on the same full-screen page (Chromium, Apple M5, 10 seconds, CPU time of the page's renderer and of the GPU process):

Version	Screen	Renderer	GPU process
1.0.12	Desktop 1440x900 @2x	4.6%	20.0%
2.0.0	Desktop 1440x900 @2x	2.7%	3.4%
1.0.12	Phone 390x844 @3x	5.3%	15.0%
2.0.0	Phone 390x844 @3x	3.2%	3.9%
2.0.0	Scrolled off-screen	0.0%	0.3%

Browser support

The aurora uses WebGL 2, or WebGL 1 on older browsers, and was tested in Chromium, Firefox and WebKit (Safari), on desktop and phone screens. Without WebGL (or when a mobile browser drops the WebGL context in the background) the still CSS version stays visible, and the animation comes back when the browser restores the context, or with a new canvas when it does not. Browsers keep about 16 WebGL contexts per page: with more auroras on screen at once, the extra ones show the still CSS version.

Upgrading from 1.x

The props are the same, so most apps only need to update the package. Things that change:

• The aurora is drawn by a WebGL shader: it looks very close, but not identical, to the CSS bubbles.
• blurAmount no longer sets a CSS backdrop-filter: it controls how soft the bubbles are (same units).
• React 18 or 19 is required, and the package no longer imports CSS module files (no bundler setup needed).
• The className of the provider is added to the container as a separate class (it was glued to an internal class name).
• Changing colors, blurAmount or animDuration after the first render now updates the aurora.
• New props: fps, paused and respectReducedMotion (reduced motion shows a still aurora by default).
• The AuroraBackground layer is exported, for custom layouts.
• Node.js 22 or later is required to install the package.

Help

Thank you for using react-aurora-background!

If you need any help using this library, feel free to create a GitHub issue and ask your questions. I'll try to answer as quickly as possible.

Contributing

Contributions of any kind are welcome! Read the contributing guide to get started (and AGENTS.md if you use a coding agent). Found a bug? Open an issue. Please follow the code of conduct.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.