useNavigation remains idle when the navigation is held up by Suspense

[SunsetFi]

Reproduction

https://github.com/SunsetFi/react-router-data-no-suspense-loading

System Info

System:
    OS: Linux 6.18 Arch Linux
    CPU: (16) x64 AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS w/ Radeon 780M Graphics
    Memory: 11.74 GB / 30.65 GB
    Container: Yes
    Shell: 5.9 - /bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 24.12.0 - /home/sunset/.nvm/versions/node/v24.12.0/bin/node
    npm: 11.6.2 - /home/sunset/.nvm/versions/node/v24.12.0/bin/npm
    pnpm: 10.17.1 - /home/sunset/.local/share/pnpm/pnpm
  Browsers:
    Chromium: 143.0.7499.169
    Firefox: 146.0.1
    Firefox Developer Edition: 146.0.1
  npmPackages:
    react-router: ^7.11.0 => 7.11.0 
    vite: ^7.3.0 => 7.3.0

Used Package Manager

pnpm

Expected Behavior

useNavigation should indicate an ongoing navigation while a navigation is pending with Suspense.

Actual Behavior

useNavigation().state stays at "idle" even while a navigation is pending due to Suspense / React.use().

It's worth noting that placing useNavigation() in a component causes that component to re-render several times through the lifecycle of the naviation. However, the values it returns never change through that time.

[timdorr]

This is expected behavior. The navigation itself has finished when your component is rendered. Whatever you've chosen to render on the page is not a part of the navigation. The only way to make something part of the navigation is by using a loader: https://reactrouter.com/start/data/data-loading

[SunsetFi]

The component is never rendered though, due to react-router wrapping it in a useTransition. I already have a React.Suspense handler at the top-level for loading, and that never gets called specifically because react-router is eating the render with its wrapping startTransition call. Nothing renders, the page cannot trigger its suspense wrapper, and react-router doesn't provide a way for the page to respond either.

I suppose I could turn all of this off with unstable_useTransition={false} and handle it with Suspense, but out of the box react-router is attempting to insert itself into the suspense pipeline through using transitions. It seems it should either fully commit to supporting it by allowing the site to respond to it, or just not use transitions at all out of the box.

In either case, I guess if that is the official answer, I will open a feature request to expose this.

[SunsetFi]

Proposal: #14696