Five breaking differences to know before migrating from Jest to Vitest
Vitest offers a largely Jest-compatible API, but several key differences can cause unexpected test failures during migration. Unlike Jest, Vitest does not inject globals like describe and expect by default, requiring either explicit imports or a config change. Path aliases must move from moduleNameMapper into Vite's resolver, mock hoisting behavior differs and no longer supports Jest's mockFoo naming convention, and mock restoration settings such as restoreMocks must be explicitly configured. Additionally, Vitest does not bundle a DOM environment, so jsdom must be installed separately — though it can be applied per file, a flexibility Jest lacked. Running the full test suite before modifying any test files helps isolate failures by category, making the migration more manageable.
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