public Folder

Next.js can serve static files, like images, under a folder called public in the root directory. Files inside public can then be referenced by your code starting from the base URL (/).

For example, the file public/avatars/me.png can be viewed by visiting the /avatars/me.png path. The code to display that image might look like:

import Image from 'next/image'

export function Avatar({ id, alt }) {
  return <Image src={`/avatars/${id}.png`} alt={alt} width="64" height="64" />
}

export function AvatarOfMe() {
  return <Avatar id="me" alt="A portrait of me" />
}

Caching

Next.js cannot safely cache assets in the public folder because they may change. The default caching headers applied are:

Cache-Control: public, max-age=0

Robots, Favicons, and others

The folder is also useful for robots.txt, favicon.ico, Google Site Verification, and any other static files (including .html). But make sure to not have a static file with the same name as a file in the pages/ directory, as this will result in an error. Read more.

For static metadata files, such as robots.txt, favicon.ico, etc, you should use special metadata files inside the app folder.