React Uncaught ReferenceError: process is not defined

Upgrading to react-scripts v5 is not always the solution.

The full reason for this bug is described here. In short here is a brief summary:

The error is as a result of react-error-overlay (which many people would never have heard of because it is a dependency of react-scripts). This package’s dependencies were update to support webpack v5, which unfortunately is not compatible with react-scripts v4.

---

Method 1 (Override a package version)

If upgrading to react-scripts v5 is not working for you, you can also try another workaround which is to pin react-error-overlay to version 6.0.9:

Delete your yarn.lock or package-lock.json, then install your dependencies again.

Using yarn

yarn will take the resolutions field into consideration out of the box.

"resolutions": {
  "//": "See https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/issues/11773",
  "react-error-overlay": "6.0.9"
}

For yarn workspaces, place the above resolution in the root package.json, not in the problematic folder. See this issue comment.

Using npm (>=v8.3.0)

The equivalent of resolutions for npm is overrides.

"overrides": {
  "react-error-overlay": "6.0.9"
},

Using npm (<8.3.0)

You need to make sure npm uses the resolutions field when you run npm install. To automate the installation, see this answer

---

Method 2 (Use a webpack plugin)

Yet another (not so popular) workaround is to use a webpack plugin:

plugins:[
  new webpack.DefinePlugin({
      process: {env: {}}
  })
]

If you use craco (v6.3.0+), you just need to modify your craco.config.js file to add that plugin:

{
  ...
  webpack: {
    plugins: {
      add: [
        new webpack.DefinePlugin({
          process: {env: {}}
        })
      ]
    }
  }
}

For customize-cra users, see this answer or this github comment.

This last method is not popular because not many CRA users ever have to touch webpack directly to work with react.