shadcn/ui Makes Base UI the Default — Radix Is Now Opt-In
· 3 min read
shadcn/ui launched on Radix in January 2023, and for three years Radix was the primitive layer under every component you copied into your repo. As of July 2026, that default has changed: new shadcn projects now scaffold on Base UI. This isn't a forced migration or a deprecation — Radix stays fully supported, and both libraries keep getting new components. The signal worth paying attention to is why the default moved: people running shadcn create were already picking Base UI over Radix roughly 2-to-1, so the default simply caught up to what teams were already choosing.