Creating a Local Plugin

If a plugin is only relevant to your specific use-case, or if you’re developing a plugin and want a simpler workflow, a locally defined plugin is a convenient way to create and manage your plugin code.

Place the code in the plugins folder in the root of your project like this:

plugins
└── my-own-plugin
    └── package.json

NOTE: You still need to add the plugin to your gatsby-config.js. There is no auto-detection of local plugins.

NOTE: For the plugin to be discovered, the plugin’s root folder name is the value that needs to be referenced in order to load it (not its name in its package.json file). For example, in the above structure, the correct way to load the plugin is:

module.exports = {
  plugins: ["my-own-plugin"],
}

Like all gatsby-* files, the code is not processed by Babel. If you want to use JavaScript syntax which isn’t supported by your version of Node.js, you can place the files in a src subfolder and build them to the plugin folder root.