A Look at React Hooks: useState

Subscribe to my newsletter and never miss my upcoming articles

Listen to this article

Welcome to A Look at React Hooks, a beginner-friendly series on React Hooks. In this article, let's look at the useState Hook.

What is useState?

This Hook is probably the most commonly used Hook. It allows us to declare, read and update a state variable easily.

It returns an array in the format [value, set function] where value is the current value of the variable and the set function is the function that updates the value of the variable.

useState only accepts one argument: the initial value of the state variable. Let's take a look at an example.


The very first step is to import the Hook:

import React, { useState } from 'react';

Then, we can declare and initialize a variable by destructing the returned array like so:

// declares and initializes count as 0
const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

In the example above, we are declaring the count variable and its update function setCount. It translates to this.state.count and this.setState in a class-based component. We pass 0 in useState as an argument, which initializes count to 0.

Getting values

In the traditional class-based component, to get the value of the variable, you can simply use this.state.variable. For example:

<p>The value of count is: {this.state.count}</p>

It is pretty much similar when using useState except that you can leave out this.state:

<p>The value of count is: {count}</p>

Updating values

Instead of using this.setState to update variable values, we can use the update function we declared upon initialization. To increment count for example:


You can call this setCount() function like any ordinary functions such as:

    Add count
const addCount = () =>{
   setCount(count + 1);

Important Things to Note

We have learned how to use and implement this Hook. It's really simple an easy to use and that's pretty much all you need to know to get started with it. However, there are a couple of details that are useful to know when using this Hook.

1. Update function overrides not merges

Unlike this.setState in class components, the update function of useState (i.e. setState()) will override instead of merging changes.

For example, let's say you have an object variable and initialize it:

const [todo, setTodo] = useState({color: 'blue', text: ' '})

Then, you want to update the text property and keep color as blue. The code below will override and remove the color property from the object:

function addNote(someText){
   setTodo(prevState => return {todo.text: someText})
//todo = {text: someText}, color property gone

Instead, you have to the spread operator like so:

setState(prevState => {
  return {...prevState, todo.text: someText};

2. Update function will enqueue a re-render

Also, note that whenever an update function is called, a re-render is enqueued, which means the component re-renders every time the state is updated.

In other words, it can be expensive to use useState for variables that often change and have to be updated.

Take a look at this example below. The input field's value is constantly changing as a user types onto it. Using the useState Hook to update the value of the input each time will cause the rendering glitches as seen in the clip.


The glitches were during the word 'fast', 'the' and 'now', as they were being typed.

Hence, expensive or frequent state changes can be solved with the useRef or useMemo Hooks which we will see in future articles of this series.

3. useState is called upon every re-renders

Relating to the previous point, an update to the state enqueues a re-render, so what happens after a re-render?

As we've learned, an argument passed into useState will be used as the initial value of the variable. However, upon subsequent renders, the argument is ignored and instead, the Hook reads the latest value of the variable and returns it.

For example, let's say we have a state and initialize it as shown below:

const [blog, setBlog] = useState('Victoria Lo'); // initial value

On the first render, React will read the argument and set the blog state to its initial value, 'Victoria Lo'.

Then, we perform some kind of update to the state:

setBlog('Articles by Victoria');
//now blog should be 'Articles by Victoria'

On the next render, React calls the Hook again, but this time, it ignores the argument and returns the latest value of the state (i.e. Articles by Victoria):

/*useState is called again but the argument 'Victoria Lo' is 
disregarded and blog is set to the latest value, Articles by Victoria*/

The problem is...

Let's say the argument passed in the Hook as its initial state is not a simple string like 'Victoria Lo'; but is an expensive computational function. Even though that function will be disregarded after the first render, it will still execute every time the component re-renders and then be replaced with the latest state. Hence, this costs unnecessary processing power and could cause the app to perform slower.

Luckily, React is aware of this issue and allows lazy initial state, which makes the function only execute once (on first render). Instead of passing the expensive function directly as an argument in useState like:

/*this calls the expensive function on every re-render before
getting replaced with the updated state*/
const [state, setState] = useState(veryExpensiveFunction());

We do this:

//this ensures that the expensive function is only called once
const [state, setState] = useState(() => {
   const initial = veryExpensiveFunction();
   return initial;

4. Remember that variables are immutable

When we initialize our state variables, remember that we use const, meaning that we cannot change their values directly.

So if we have an array for example, we can initialize it as:

const [myArray, setMyArray] = useState(['a', 'b']);

Usually, we can add elements to an array using .push() such as:


This, however, will not work with our update function because we are not allowed to directly modify our array. We can use the spread operator, which will copy and return a new array with updated values. And as mentioned in the first point, the update function overrides, not merges changes.

setMyArray(myArray =>([...myArray, 'c']));
//myArray = ['a', 'b', 'c'];


And that's the gist of this Hook! Thanks for reading this article. I hope it was helpful for React beginners. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments below. Ultimately, practising and building projects with this Hook will help anyone to pick it up faster.

The next Hook in this series will be: useEffect. Stay tuned and cheers!


Edidiong Asikpo's photo

Hey Victoria Lo. I really enjoyed reading the second article of this series, and I am looking forward to the third one.

I have a question for you. 😀


Concerning lazy initial state, are you saying passing a default state makes the app slower because React will always rerender it?

Victoria Lo's photo

Hi Edidiong Asikpo, thanks for your question. Yes, the purpose of lazy initial state is to prevent subsequent re-renders of the same expensive function that you only want to run once.

Let's say you want to run this function upon render but just once:

const [state, setState] = useState(getInitialHundredItems())

The way React useState works is that even after you updated the state, the initial state function will get executed and then disregarded (replaced with updated value). So if initial state is an expensive function, it will be waste of processing power. Since all initial states will be disregarded and replaced with updated value (if exist) anyways, lazy initial state ensures that the expensive function runs only once.

Edidiong Asikpo's photo

Ah ah. This makes sense. Thanks for explaining Victoria Lo

Jome Favourite's photo

Interesting read Victoria, I once ran into an error using this


Is there a reason why the example above doesn't work? I'll like to know and also thanks for sharing 🤩.

Victoria Lo's photo

Thanks for reading Jome Favourite!

To answer your question:

setCount(count+1) is taking the current value of 'count', adding 1 to it and then passing this to our setCountto update our state. Since count is a const, we cannot reassign the 'count' variable, React is simply updating the value of 'count' under the hood using the setter function.

count++ can be written as count=count+1. As you can see, you are trying to change/re-assign the value of a const, which is impossible. Hence, the error.

Jome Favourite's photo

Okay Victoria Lo. I understand know, thanks for answering.