# welldone-software/why-did-you-render

why-did-you-render by Welldone Software monkey patches React to notify you about potentially avoidable re-renders. (Works with React Native as well.)

Repository: https://github.com/welldone-software/why-did-you-render
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/why-did-you-render
Homepage: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@welldone-software/why-did-you-render
Language: JavaScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: react, component, pure, performance, render, update, tool, react-native, purecomponent, hooks-tracking
Last push: 2026-04-15T11:11:13+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 69/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 77, release rhythm 40, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2853, "days_push": 140, "days_rel": 592, "gap_med": 0, "n_releases_24m": 2}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 12512, forks 224 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:59.262360+00:00)

## What it is
why-did-you-render is a JavaScript library that monkey patches React to notify developers about potentially avoidable re-renders of components. It works with React and React Native and can also track when and why specific components re-render.

## Use cases
- find out why a React component re-renders unnecessarily
- debug avoidable re-renders caused by inline object props like style={{width: '100%'}}
- track when and why a specific component updates
- optimize performance of heavy React components
- detect unnecessary re-renders in React Native apps
- trace re-renders caused by hooks dependencies

## When to choose
- you are debugging performance issues caused by excessive React re-renders
- you use React or React Native and want to understand component update behavior
- you want to verify memoization (React.memo, PureComponent, useMemo) is working as expected

## When to avoid
- you use the React Compiler, which is likely incompatible with this library
- you need production performance monitoring rather than development-time debugging
- your components are lightweight and re-render optimization would add complexity with negligible benefit

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: monitoring, developer-tools, logging
- domain: frontend, web-development, developer-tools, performance
- platform: browser, cross-platform
- tags: react, react-native, re-renders, debugging, performance-optimization, hooks-tracking, nodejs

## Member repositories
- welldone-software/why-did-you-render (main) score 69

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:59.262360+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:13:59.347261+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/welldone-software/why-did-you-render (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:59.262360+00:00, sha ffe7d2b9f684)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.