How to disable default Next.js redirects?

[hdodov]

Summary

By default, Next.js removes trailing slashes with the trailingSlash option. However, this doesn't play well with the custom redirects I have in my middleware.

I have the following middleware.ts (simplified for brevity):

import { NextResponse } from "next/server";
import type { NextRequest } from "next/server";

export async function middleware(request: NextRequest) {
  const path = request.nextUrl.pathname;
  if (path === "/foo/bar" && otherConditions) {
    return NextResponse.redirect("/foo");
  }
}

…and when a user navigates to /foo/bar/, they are redirected twice:

1. /foo/bar/ → /foo/bar (308 internal Next.js redirect)
2. /foo/bar → /foo (307 custom middleware redirect)

The issue here is that redirect chains are bad for SEO. For this reason, I want to disable the default Next.js functionality and implement it myself in the middleware in a way that works with my other redirects. How can I do this?

I tried changing the trailingSlash setting to true, but that just makes non-trailing slash paths redirect to their trailing slash counterparts, which is worse. And setting it to undefined just leaves the default behavior.

Additional information

Operating System:
  Platform: darwin
  Arch: x64
  Version: Darwin Kernel Version 23.6.0: Thu Sep 12 23:34:49 PDT 2024; root:xnu-10063.141.1.701.1~1/RELEASE_X86_64
  Available memory (MB): 32768
  Available CPU cores: 16
Binaries:
  Node: 20.17.0
  npm: 10.8.2
  Yarn: N/A
  pnpm: 9.9.0
Relevant Packages:
  next: 15.0.1
  eslint-config-next: 15.0.1
  react: 19.0.0-rc-cae764ce-20241025
  react-dom: 19.0.0-rc-cae764ce-20241025
  typescript: 5.6.3
Next.js Config:
  output: standalone