instant navigation feature conflicts with navigation.tracking

[CNSeniorious000]

Context

I want to use the SPA feature, but it seems it break some other features.

Bug description

If I select navigation.instant together with navigation.tracking, the navigation.tracking won't work.

(I am on latest mkdocs and mkdocs-material, using latest python on Windows 11.)

Related links

• Reporting a bug
• A demo deploy

Reproduction

9.5.6-feature-conflicts.zip

Steps to reproduce

1. Download this minimal project file: all-files.zip
2. Run pdm install to install mkdocs>=1.5.3 and mkdocs-material>=9.5.6
3. Run pdm dev to start mkdocs serve server
4. Open localhost:8000 and the url won't change with scrolling
5. By the way, the toc highlight won't work too, I don't know why
6. Remove - navigation.instant, then restart the server by terminate the server and restart it manually
7. The toc and the url works fine again. So I think it is navigation.instant's fault

---

By the way, I find that navigation.instant won't work in the mkdocs build results. I don't know why. But you can reproduce it using:

8. Run pdm gen to invoke mkdocs build command
9. Serve the site folder using any static server (or visiting this demo which is my run results)
10. Open the browser and try to navigate

Browser

Edge

Before submitting

• I have read and followed the bug reporting guidelines.
• I have attached links to the documentation, and possibly related issues and discussions.
• I assure that I have removed all customizations before submitting this bug report.
• I have attached a .zip file with a minimal reproduction.

[squidfunk]

Thanks for reporting. Definitely related to our latest refactoring of instant navigation in 9.5.5.

Temporary mitigation: disable navigation.instant or downgrade to 9.5.4:

pip install --force-reinstall mkdocs-material==9.5.4

[squidfunk]

Fixed in 88004be. This was a regression introduced in 9.5.5 which impacted the following features:

• navigation.tracking
• toc.follow

[squidfunk]

Released as part of 9.5.7.

[CNSeniorious000]

Thank you! The navigation.instant featrue works fine in mkdocs serve with navigation.tracking and toc.follow, but there is still a problem:

The navigation.instant works only in mkdocs serve environment, not for the mkdocs build results.

I update the mkdocs.yml as follow:

site_name: My Docs
theme:
  name: material
  features:
+   - navigation.instant
+   - navigation.instant.progress
    - navigation.tracking
    - toc.follow

And I update the version of mkdocs-material in pyproject.toml like this:

- dependencies = ["mkdocs>=1.5.3", "mkdocs-material>=9.5.6"]
+ dependencies = ["mkdocs>=1.5.3", "mkdocs-material>=9.5.7"]

All the other files are the same as before.

You can reproduce this by simply update mkdocs.yml and pyproject.toml like this, or visit the bug demo I redeployed.

I think it is a bug in mkdocs's JavaScript bundling process during mkdocs build, but I am not familiar with mkdocs so I can't dive into the code too much.

---

Or, should I open a new issue or provide a new reproduction zip file?

[squidfunk]

You're likely missing the site_url setting. I explained why this is necessary for instant previews in #6704 (comment) , which is the same reason it is necessary for instant navigation.