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Custom Templates

Note: this feature is available with react-scripts@3.3.0 and higher.

Custom Templates enable you to select a template to create your project from, while still retaining all of the features of Create React App.

You'll notice that Custom Templates are always named in the format cra-template-[template-name], however you only need to provide the [template-name] to the creation command.

Scoped templates are also supported, under the name @[scope-name]/cra-template or @[scope-name]/cra-template-[template-name], which can be installed via @[scope] and @[scope]/[template-name] respectively.

npx create-react-app my-app --template [template-name]

Finding custom templates​

We ship two templates by default:

However, you can find many great community templates by searching for "cra-template-*" on npm.

Building a template​

If you're interested in building a custom template, first take a look at how we've built cra-template.

A template must have the following structure:

cra-template-[template-name]/
  README.md (for npm)
  template.json
  package.json
  template/
    README.md (for projects created from this template)
    gitignore
    public/
      index.html
    src/
      index.js (or index.tsx)

Testing a template​

To test a template locally, pass the file path to the directory of your template source using the file: prefix.

npx create-react-app my-app --template file:../path/to/your/template/cra-template-[template-name]

The template folder​

This folder is copied to the user's app directory as Create React App installs. During this process, the file gitignore is renamed to .gitignore.

You can add whatever files you want in here, but you must have at least the files specified above.

The template.json file​

This is the configuration file for your template. As this is a new feature, more options will be added over time. For now, only a package key is supported.

The package key lets you provide any keys/values that you want added to the new project's package.json, such as dependencies and any custom scripts that your template relies on.

Below is an example template.json file:

{
  "package": {
    "dependencies": {
      "eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y": "^6.2.3",
      "serve": "^11.2.0"
    },
    "scripts": {
      "serve": "serve -s build",
      "build-and-serve": "npm run build && npm run serve"
    },
    "eslintConfig": {
      "extends": ["react-app", "plugin:jsx-a11y/recommended"],
      "plugins": ["jsx-a11y"]
    }
  }
}

Any values you add for "dependencies" and "scripts" will be merged with the Create React App defaults. Values for any other keys will be used as-is, replacing any matching Create React App defaults.

For convenience, we always replace npm run with yarn in your custom "scripts", as well as in your README when projects are initialized with yarn.