Plugins directory

Nuxt will automatically read the files in your plugins directory and load them. You can use .server or .client suffix in the file name to load a plugin only on the server or client side.

Which Files Are Registered

Only files at the top level of the plugins/ directory (or index files within any subdirectories) will be registered as plugins.

For example:

plugins | - myPlugin.ts | - myOtherPlugin | --- supportingFile.ts | --- componentToRegister.vue | --- index.ts

Only myPlugin.ts and myOtherPlugin/index.ts would be registered.

Creating Plugins

The only argument passed to a plugin is nuxtApp.

export default defineNuxtPlugin(nuxtApp => {  // Doing something with nuxtApp})

Automatically Providing Helpers

If you would like to provide a helper on the NuxtApp instance, return it from the plugin under a provide key. For example:

export default defineNuxtPlugin(() => {  return {    provide: {      hello: (msg: string) => `Hello ${msg}!`    }  }})

In another file you can use this:

<template>  <div>    {{ $hello('world') }}  </div></template><script setup lang="ts">// alternatively, you can also use it hereconst { $hello } = useNuxtApp()</script>

Typing Plugins

If you return your helpers from the plugin, they will be typed automatically; you'll find them typed for the return of useNuxtApp() and within your templates.

Advanced

For advanced use-cases, you can declare the type of injected properties like this:

declare module '#app' {  interface NuxtApp {    $hello (msg: string): string  }}declare module '@vue/runtime-core' {  interface ComponentCustomProperties {    $hello (msg: string): string  }}export { }

Vue Plugins

If you want to use Vue plugins, like vue-gtag to add Google Analytics tags, you can use a Nuxt plugin to do so.

There is an Open RFC to make this even easier! See nuxt/framework#1175

First, install the plugin you want.

yarn add --dev vue-gtag-next

Then create a plugin file plugins/vue-gtag.client.js.

import VueGtag from 'vue-gtag-next'export default defineNuxtPlugin((nuxtApp) => {  nuxtApp.vueApp.use(VueGtag, {    property: {      id: 'GA_MEASUREMENT_ID'    }  })})

Vue Directives

Similarly, you can register a custom Vue directive in a plugin. For example, in plugins/directive.ts:

export default defineNuxtPlugin((nuxtApp) => {  nuxtApp.vueApp.directive('focus', {    mounted (el) {      el.focus()    },    getSSRProps (binding, vnode) {      // you can provide SSR-specific props here      return {}    }  })})