According to the documentation docs setting the useFileSystemPublicRoutes configuration option to false prevents routing based on files in /pages directory. But i cant understand what it really does because they dont elaborate much.
I will appreciate it if someone could explain it to me with simple examples of what this config does.
useFileSystemPublicRoutes set to false does only one thing - disables built-in server-side routing.
For example, let's say you have two pages:
/pages/foo.js/pages/bar.jsBy default, upon build Next.js will register two routes:
example.com/fooexample.com/barWhen useFileSystemPublicRoutes set to false these two routes won't be created at server side, so a user can't access it by typing example.com/foo in browser URL bar.
However, client-side navigation still can access these routes if you use next/link or next/router.
You don't need to use useFileSystemPublicRoutes config unless you have a custom server and Next.js routes that were registered based on the pages directory interfere with it.