React product analytics installation

Install the package

Required

Install the PostHog JavaScript library using your package manager:

npm install posthog-js
yarn add posthog-js
pnpm add posthog-js

Add environment variables

Required

Add your PostHog API key and host to your environment variables. For Vite-based React apps, use the VITE_PUBLIC_ prefix:

.env
VITE_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_KEY=<ph_project_api_key>
VITE_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_HOST=https://us.i.posthog.com

Initialize PostHog

Required

Wrap your app with the PostHogProvider component at the root of your application (such as main.tsx if you're using Vite):

main.tsx
import { StrictMode } from 'react'
import { createRoot } from 'react-dom/client'
import './index.css'
import App from './App.jsx'
import { PostHogProvider } from 'posthog-js/react'

const options = {
  api_host: import.meta.env.VITE_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_HOST,
  defaults: '2025-11-30',
} as const

createRoot(document.getElementById('root')).render(
  <StrictMode>
    <PostHogProvider apiKey={import.meta.env.VITE_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_KEY} options={options}>
      <App />
    </PostHogProvider>
  </StrictMode>
)

defaults option

The defaults option automatically configures PostHog with recommended settings for new projects. See SDK defaults for details.

4
Send events
Optional
Once installed, PostHog will automatically start capturing events. You can also manually send events to test your integration:
Click around and view a couple pages to generate some events. PostHog automatically captures pageviews, clicks, and other interactions for you.
If you'd like, you can also manually capture custom events:
JavaScript
posthog.capture('my_custom_event', { property: 'value' })
By default, for backwards compatibility reasons, events are sent with person profile processing enabled. This means a person profile will be created for each user who triggers an event.
If you want to disable person profile processing for certain events, send the event with the following property:
Javascript
"$process_person_profile": false

Next steps

Recommended

Resource	Description
Capturing events	Learn how to capture custom events beyond autocapture
Identifying users	Associate events with specific users
Creating insights	Build trends, funnels, and retention charts
Group analytics	Track events at the company or account level

React product analytics installation

Install the package

Add environment variables

Initialize PostHog

Send events

Next steps

Community questions

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