Angular 18 Released: Zoneless Change Detection Now Stable

The Angular team has released Angular 18, a landmark release that stabilises many features previewed in Angular 17 and pushes the framework firmly into the Signals era.

Stable Zoneless Change Detection

The experimental zoneless mode introduced in Angular 17 is now stable. Projects can opt in by providing provideExperimentalZonelessChangeDetection() — which will be renamed to provideZonelessChangeDetection() in Angular 19.

// app.config.ts
export const appConfig: ApplicationConfig = {
  providers: [
    provideZonelessChangeDetection(), // Angular 18+
  ],
};

Angular Material 3

Angular Material has been updated with Material Design 3 (Material You) tokens and theming. The new theming system uses CSS custom properties instead of Sass variables, making runtime theme switching trivial.

Improved SSR and Hydration

Angular 18 brings event replay during hydration — user interactions that happen before the application fully hydrates are now queued and replayed once hydration completes, preventing lost clicks or keypresses.

Signal-Based Inputs Stable

// Stable in Angular 18
export class MyComponent {
  name  = input.required<string>();
  value = input(0);
  changed = output<number>();
}