Preview release content

Once a release is active, you can preview its content exactly as it will look after launch. Uniform forwards the current release context to your frontend preview, so compositions, entries, and patterns resolve to their release versions instead of the base state. This lets editors, reviewers, and stakeholders validate release content end-to-end before it is launched.

If you are using the visual editor to preview content in Uniform, the preview panel automatically respects the currently active release – no additional configuration is required. As soon as you activate a release, the preview reloads and the frontend serves the release version of any composition or entry it renders.

Switching the active release (for example, back to Base via the release switcher) immediately updates the preview, so you can compare different releases and verify that the release-only changes look correct in context.

When a release is active in the editor, Uniform appends a releaseId query parameter to the preview URL that it opens on your frontend, for example:

https://your-site.com/preview?id=[!!! COMPOSITION ID !!!]&releaseId=[!!! UNIFORM RELEASE ID !!!]

If your frontend uses the Uniform Next.js SDKs, the preview handlers in @uniformdev/canvas-next and @uniformdev/canvas-next-rsc forward this releaseId to the page being rendered and the SDK automatically requests release-aware content. No extra wiring is required to make release previews work end-to-end.

If your frontend is not built with the Next.js SDKs, the preview URL still carries the same releaseId query parameter. You can read it in your own preview / draft handler and pass it to the Uniform client when fetching content – see Preview release content with any frontend or external app below.

Release previews are gated to preview mode

The releaseId query parameter is only honored when the frontend is running in preview or draft mode. Requests made in production mode always return content from Base, so live visitors never see unreleased content.

Minimum SDK version

Built-in release support in the preview handlers requires @uniformdev/canvas-next or @uniformdev/canvas-next-rsc version 20.58.0 or later. On older SDK versions the releaseId query parameter is not forwarded automatically and the preview falls back to Base.

If you cannot upgrade, see the knowledge base article How to create links to preview content for a specific Uniform release for snippets that wire releaseId through withUniformGetStaticProps (Page Router) or retrieveRoute (App Router).

Because the releaseId is carried on the preview URL, you can share the preview of a composition or an entry in a given release with people who do not have access to Uniform. Open the preview in a new browser tab from the editor, then copy its URL from the address bar – the releaseId query parameter is already present. Anyone who opens the link in a browser session that has preview / draft mode enabled on your frontend will see the release version of the content.

How preview / draft mode is enabled for a given session depends on your frontend setup. For details, see Configure preview and Activate visual editing.

Preview release content with any frontend or external app#

The built-in release forwarding described above is specific to the Uniform Next.js SDKs. For any other setup, you can still preview release content by passing the release ID directly to the Uniform client when you construct it. The release ID can come from any source you trust (a query string parameter, a server-side session, an environment variable in a preview build, etc.):

import { CanvasClient } from '@uniformdev/canvas'; const client = new CanvasClient({ apiKey: '[!!! UNIFORM API KEY !!!]', projectId: '[!!! UNIFORM PROJECT ID !!!]', releaseId: '[!!! UNIFORM RELEASE ID !!!]', }); client.getCompositionList().then((result) => { const { compositions } = result; });
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