gatsbyjs/gatsby · error

[gatsby-react-router-scroll] Unable to access sessionStorage

Error message

[gatsby-react-router-scroll] Unable to access sessionStorage; sessionStorage is not available.

What it means

Browser warning from gatsby-react-router-scroll: window.sessionStorage.getItem threw (storage blocked by browser privacy settings or unavailable), so no saved scroll position exists and 0 is returned; printed only outside production.

Source

Thrown at packages/gatsby-react-router-scroll/src/session-storage.ts:14

import { Path } from "history"
const STATE_KEY_PREFIX = `@@scroll|`
const GATSBY_ROUTER_SCROLL_STATE = `___GATSBY_REACT_ROUTER_SCROLL`

export class SessionStorage {
  read(location: Path, key: string): number {
    const stateKey = this.getStateKey(location, key)

    try {
      const value = window.sessionStorage.getItem(stateKey)
      return value ? JSON.parse(value) : 0
    } catch (e) {
      if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== `production`) {
        console.warn(
          `[gatsby-react-router-scroll] Unable to access sessionStorage; sessionStorage is not available.`
        )
      }

      if (
        window &&
        window[GATSBY_ROUTER_SCROLL_STATE] &&
        window[GATSBY_ROUTER_SCROLL_STATE][stateKey]
      ) {
        return window[GATSBY_ROUTER_SCROLL_STATE][stateKey]
      }

      return 0
    }
  }

  save(location: Path, key: string, value: number): void {
    const stateKey = this.getStateKey(location, key)

View on GitHub (pinned to e85d62f177)

Solutions

1. Allow cookies/site storage in the browser
2. Accept degraded scroll restoration when storage is unavailable

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at packages/gatsby-react-router-scroll/src/session-storage.ts:14 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of gatsbyjs/gatsby@e85d62f177 (2026-08-26). Data as JSON: /api/errors/7f7aba2039a51a82. Report an issue: GitHub.