Changelog - 2026-11-08

useStoredState can turn its storage off with a null key

New Feature

In one line. A hook call cannot be conditional, so useStoredState now takes key: string | null. With null it stores nothing and keeps its value in memory, like useState.

import { useStoredState } from '@venizia/ardor';

export function Sidebar({ userId }: { userId: string | undefined }) {
  // Nothing is stored until the user is known.
  const { value, setValue } = useStoredState({
    key: userId ? `@app/prefs/${userId}/sidebar` : null,
    defaultValue: 'open',
  });

  return <button onClick={() => setValue(value === 'open' ? 'closed' : 'open')}>{value}</button>;
}

What changed

• Allow key to be null to disable storage. When null, the hook acts like standard React useState by keeping state in memory, setting the initial value to defaultValue, and skipping all storage reads, writes and listeners. remove() puts the value back to defaultValue and touches no storage.
• Moving from null to a storage key. Switching key to a string starts reading that key and discards any temporary value held in memory.
• Moving from a storage key to null. Switching key to null resets the value to defaultValue and leaves the stored value untouched. A delayed write (writeDelayMs) that is still pending is written to the previous key.

Who is affected

• A component that stores state only when something is known (a user id, a feature flag). Pass null as the key until it is.
• All other apps. No action needed; a string key works as before.

See Hooks.