Public Group, Auth Group, and Protected Group

[fahmiidris]

I have three categories of pages in my Next.js app:

Public pages – Usually I create a folder like this: src/app(public)/. All pages in this group can be accessed by both logged-in and non-logged-in users.

Protected pages – I usually put them in: src/app(protected)/. These pages should only be accessible to users who are logged in.

Auth pages – I create a folder like this: src/app(auth)/. These pages should only be accessible to users who are not logged in, like /sign-in, /sign-up, etc.

What’s the best way to protect them?
The easiest way is to add a check inside the layout group. But the docs don’t recommend that approach.
I also looked into using middleware, but that means I have to manually define all the routes again – and I really don’t want to do that.

Do you get what I mean? I need a solution – thanks!