Say Hello to Template Universe and Goodbye to Project Setup

Template Universe

The reality of starting a new project isn't nearly as exciting as the idea of it. There's a bunch of up-front tasks you first have to get out of the way before you can get to the fun part—coding up your new creation.

There's setting up your dev environment, configuring a server, and then all the project-specific stuff, like installing dependencies, creating the file structure, and writing boilerplate code to perform everyday tasks.

Thankfully, with CodeSandbox, you can skip most of that. When you create a new sandbox, everything's already up and running. But what about the project setup stuff? Well, that's where templates come in.

Start from a working project

Templates in CodeSandbox provide a quick starting point for projects that are configured and ready to go. They're forkable projects with the dependencies, file structure, and config already sorted. More than 3M sandboxes have been created using one. You can find official templates for popular libraries like React, Vue, Angular and others. You can also create your own template from scratch or fork an existing template with your own adjustments. The perfect start for your next project!

Today we're excited to announce Template Universe, which takes custom templates a step further. Template Universe enables you to share and use templates created by the community and makes it possible for the maintainers of frameworks and libraries to add official ones too.

One-click and you're ready to code

When you code on CodeSandbox, you're coding with a community of creators. We're all trying things out and learning new frameworks by forking sandboxes and using dependencies to see what works. Template Universe brings this code-sharing collaboration to templates, so you can leverage the best community-created templates to kickstart something new.

How it works

Custom templates can be public or private. Public ones are automatically published to Template Universe, so they're available to everyone when starting a new project. You can choose a template from right inside the editor. Templates can be searched and filtered by keywords and dependencies, and you can view the details of a template before getting started, or bookmark those you find useful. Doing so adds them to your own Create New Sandbox screen, so with one click, you're good to begin coding on your next project.

We've already had templates contributed for Ember, Nest, CxJS, Dojo, Quasar, Adonis, and more. And you can use templates for more than framework starters. Check out the categories for curated collections of templates for trying out specific features in a library, playing with a design system, or creating visualizations.

No sandbox limits

Oh, and we've removed sandbox creation limits. Previously, unless you were a subscriber, you could only create up to 50 client-side sandboxes and 15 container sandboxes. Now, there are no limits. Everyone can create as many public sandboxes as they need for free.

Templates are a great way to boost your productivity, and you can now create sandboxes without limits. Start a new sandbox with Template Universe, or read about how to create your own custom templates.