How to Set Up Path Aliases in Vite (vite.config.js / vite.config.ts)

Path aliases let you write import MyComponent from '@/components/MyComponent.vue' instead of import MyComponent from '../../../components/MyComponent.vue'. Vite doesn't set up the @ alias by default, so you get a "Failed to resolve import" error the first time you try it. The fix is two files: vite.config.js (or .ts) and jsconfig.json (or tsconfig.json).

Why use path aliases?

Relative imports like ../../../components/Button.vue work fine in small projects. Once a project grows past a few folders deep, they get hard to read and brittle to refactor. If you move a file, every relative import path in that file breaks. An alias like @ resolves to src/ regardless of where the importing file lives, so moving files is low-friction.

Path aliases in vite.config.js

Configure the alias in the resolve.alias field:

vite.config.js

import { defineConfig } from 'vite'
import vue from '@vitejs/plugin-vue'
import path from 'path'

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [vue()],
  resolve: {
    alias: {
      '@': path.resolve(__dirname, './src'),
    },
  },
})

You can add as many aliases as you like:

resolve: {
  alias: {
    '@': path.resolve(__dirname, './src'),
    '@components': path.resolve(__dirname, './src/components'),
    '@utils': path.resolve(__dirname, './src/utils'),
  },
},

Once this is set, Vite will resolve @/... imports correctly during the build and in vite dev. The error goes away.

TypeScript projects: vite.config.ts

For TypeScript projects, the config file is vite.config.ts. The __dirname variable is available in Node.js but not typed by default, so use import.meta.url and fileURLToPath instead:

vite.config.ts

import { defineConfig } from 'vite'
import vue from '@vitejs/plugin-vue'
import { fileURLToPath, URL } from 'node:url'

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [vue()],
  resolve: {
    alias: {
      '@': fileURLToPath(new URL('./src', import.meta.url)),
    },
  },
})

This is also the format Vite's official scaffolding (npm create vite@latest) generates for Vue TypeScript projects.

Editor intellisense: jsconfig.json and tsconfig.json

Configuring vite.config.js tells Vite's bundler how to resolve paths. Your code editor (VS Code, WebStorm, etc.) uses a separate config for its own path resolution. Without this, imports using @/ won't have autocomplete or go-to-definition.

For JavaScript projects — jsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": ".",
    "paths": {
      "@/*": ["src/*"]
    }
  }
}

For TypeScript projects — tsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": ".",
    "paths": {
      "@/*": ["./src/*"]
    }
  }
}

After saving this file, the editor will recognize @/ imports and provide autocomplete.

Common issues

Frequently asked questions