OnboardJS

OnboardJS vs React Joyride

React Joyride Alternative: Why Devs Switch to OnboardJS

React Joyride is great for quick overlay tours, but if you need the flow to feel like your app - not a layer on top of it - OnboardJS's headless architecture gives you complete control.

At a Glance

Feature Comparison

FeatureReact JoyrideOnboardJS
ArchitectureOverlay/modal basedHeadless/native
Step TypesTooltips onlyModals, tooltips, inline, custom
TypeScriptPartial typesNative TypeScript
AnalyticsManual setupBuilt-in tracking
Design SystemInjected stylesYour components (Tailwind/Shadcn)
MaintenanceActive, but complex APISimple, modern API

Why Switch?

The Architectural Differences

Why React Joyride Breaks Your Design System

Joyride injects its own styles and DOM elements, creating a visual disconnect. Your carefully crafted design system gets overridden by Joyride's default styles, requiring extensive CSS overrides to match your brand.

React Joyride

Joyride's tooltip uses inline styles and fixed positioning that conflicts with your Tailwind config

OnboardJS

OnboardJS renders your components—use your existing Button, Card, or Tooltip components directly

The TypeScript Experience Gap

Joyride's types are bolted on, not built in. You'll encounter type mismatches, missing generics for step data, and autocomplete that doesn't understand your custom properties.

React Joyride

Step callbacks have `any` typed parameters, losing type safety on custom data

OnboardJS

Full generic support: `Step<YourData>` gives you autocomplete on every property

Analytics Requires Extra Plumbing

Tracking user progress through your onboarding flow means manually wiring up events to your analytics provider. Joyride doesn't provide built-in analytics hooks.

React Joyride

You need to manually call PostHog/Amplitude in every callback

OnboardJS

Built-in analytics events: step_viewed, step_completed, flow_finished

Migration

Before & After

See the difference in code. OnboardJS lets you use your own components while keeping the API simple.

BeforeReact Joyride: Imperative, style overrides required
tsx
35 lines
import Joyride from 'react-joyride';

function App() {
  const [run, setRun] = useState(false);

  const steps = [
    {
      target: '.my-element',
      content: 'This is my element!',
      disableBeacon: true,
    },
  ];

  return (
    <Joyride
      steps={steps}
      run={run}
      continuous
      showProgress
      showSkipButton
      callback={(data) => {
        // Manual analytics tracking
        if (data.status === 'finished') {
          analytics.track('tour_complete');
        }
      }}
      styles={{
        options: {
          // Override every style manually
          primaryColor: '#your-brand-color',
        },
      }}
    />
  );
}
AfterOnboardJS: Declarative, use your own components
tsx
26 lines
import { OnboardingProvider, useOnboarding } from '@onboardjs/react';

const steps = [
  {
    id: 'welcome',
    component: ({ onNext }) => (
      <YourTooltip>  {/* Your component! */}
        <p>This is my element!</p>
        <YourButton onClick={onNext}>Next</YourButton>
      </YourTooltip>
    ),
  },
];

function App() {
  return (
    <OnboardingProvider
      steps={steps}
      onStepChange={(step) => {
        // Analytics built-in, or use your own
      }}
    >
      <YourApp />
    </OnboardingProvider>
  );
}

Ready to drop the overlays?

Start building onboarding that feels native to your app.

Terminal
1 lines
npm install @onboardjs/core @onboardjs/react
View on GitHub