x-cloak

Sometimes, when you're using AlpineJS for a part of your template, there is a "blip" where you might see your uninitialized template after the page loads, but before Alpine loads.

x-cloak addresses this scenario by hiding the element it's attached to until Alpine is fully loaded on the page.

For x-cloak to work however, you must add the following CSS to the page.

[x-cloak] { display: none !important; }

Now, the following example will hide the <span> tag until Alpine has set its text content to the message property.

<span x-cloak x-text="message"></span>

When Alpine loads on the page, it removes all x-cloak property from the element, which also removes the display: none; applied by CSS, therefore showing the element.

If you'd like to achieve this same behavior, but avoid having to include a global style, you can use the following cool, but admittedly odd trick:

<template x-if="true">
    <span x-text="message"></span>
</template>

This will achieve the same goal as x-cloak by just leveraging the way x-if works.

Because <template> elements are "hidden" in browsers by default, you won't see the <span> until Alpine has had a chance to render the x-if="true" and show it.

Again, this solution is not for everyone, but it's worth mentioning for special cases.