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Shadcn/UI now defaults to Base UI instead of Radix

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Starting today, Base UI is the default component library in shadcn/ui.

First, a bit of history. When shadcn/ui launched in January 2023, it was built on Radix. At the time, nothing else came close. Unstyled headless components, great APIs, great accessibility, battle-tested in millions of apps.

Fast forward a few years and the same folks who built Radix are building something new: Base UI. They've done it once. Now they get to do it again, with everything they learned the first time.

Last year, Base UI tagged a beta and a lot of you asked if we are going to replace Radix with it. I said "the worst thing you can do for your production app is switch component libraries". I meant it, and it still holds. So instead of switching, we did the shadcn thing: we rebuilt every component for Base UI, kept the same abstraction, and let you choose. December brought npx shadcn create with both libraries. January brought full Base UI docs.

Then we watched what you did with it.

Base UI is stable. It's at 1.6.0 with 6M+ weekly downloads.

It's at 1.6.0 with 6M+ weekly downloads. It keeps getting better. The team ships new and useful components regularly.

The team ships new and useful components regularly. We use it. Every new project we've started runs on Base UI.

Every new project we've started runs on Base UI. You use it. Projects created on shadcn/create now pick Base UI over Radix 2 to 1.

The community already made the call. We're making it official.

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