Add a table of contents to every piece of documentation content

[gilangabdian]

Goals

goal: Every piece of content in the Next.js docs has a Table of Contents (ToC).

Background

When I first learned NextJS, I used to learn from the official NextJS documentation, there I realized that in every available content I had to scroll from top to bottom to find the content that matched what I needed and if it turned out that the content was missed then I had to scroll up again to get to that content.

This makes me a little uncomfortable and I think it would be more convenient if each documentation content had a Table of Content (ToC) that could be clicked and if clicked it would automatically scroll to the menu that was clicked. I believe this would help new users quickly see what sub-menus or topics are covered on the page. For example, in the Getting Started > Installation menu, there are many submenus, there are quick start, system requirements, supported browsers, create with cli, manual installation and so on. If there is no ToC, the user has to scroll from top to bottom to find out what submenus/topics there are in the content, and if the user misses the topic/submenu they need, the user has to scroll up again. This makes it a little longer for users to find the submenus/topics in the content they need.

That is why I am requesting this feature. To the maintainers, if you have time, please read the complaints I have experienced and whether this feature will be possible to be realized in the future? or maybe there are already plans for this feature? Or what?

But if this feature is intentionally left out for internal reasons, with respect, could I know why?

Proposal

How should this feature be implemented?
We should implement an automatic, sticky Table of Contents (ToC) on the right side of the page for all Next.js documentation.

• Layout: The ToC should sit in the right-hand margin, remaining fixed (sticky) as the user scrolls through the content.
• Functionality: Clicking any heading in the ToC should smoothly scroll the user to that specific section of the document.
• Automation: The ToC should be dynamically generated based on the Markdown or MDX heading tags (## and ###) present in each documentation file.
• Responsive Design: The right-side ToC should automatically hide on smaller screen sizes (like mobile devices) to maintain a clean layout.

With respect, if it is allowed, I would be happy to work on this feature and make sure it will not break other features.

[icyJoseph]

We do have a ToC and it works literally as you describe — and we will soon have a new layout that also has the ToC on mobile navigation.

[icyJoseph]

Yeah, since day 1 AFAIK — the problem is breakpoint at which it hides.

Which is why we have a new solution, but it is part of a larger scope. I could try to backport a temporary patch though

Screen.Recording.2026-08-20.at.17.34.37.mov

[gilangabdian]

Yes, I saw it and I'm sorry I just realized it and I thought this feature didn't exist because my laptop doesn't have ToC, I just tried inspect web and using 1440 dimensions it appeared. However, if I exit inspect mode the ToC disappears again.

If this is a bug, hopefully it will be fixed soon. Thank you for the quick response and the explanation🙏

[icyJoseph]

It is not a bug — but I'd say, our ToC was incomplete. I'll add a temporary one at the top — which you should be able to use to navigate as a ToC — thanks for the feedback!!

[icyJoseph]

A ToC is out there now — it is very light, I expect to migrate our docs engine soon, but or the time being it should do the trick.

[gilangabdian]

That's great, I'm happy for you. Thanks for your hard work!