React Hooks – Input loses focus when 1 character is typed in

While the answer by Kais will solve the symptoms, it will leave the cause unaddressed. It will also fail if there are multiple inputs – which one should autofocus itself on rerender then?

The issue happens when you define a component (FormComponent) inside the scope of another function which is called each render of your App component. This gives you a completely new FormComponent each time your App component is rerendered and calls useState. That new component is then, well, without focus.

Personally I would feel against returning components from a hook. I would instead define a FormComponent component, and only return state from useForm state.

But, a working example closest to your original code could be:

// useForm.js
import React, { useState } from "react";

// Define the FormComponent outside of your useForm hook
const FormComponent = ({ setState, state, label }) => (
  <form>
    <label htmlFor={label}>
      {label}
      <input
        type="text"
        id={label}
        value={state}
        placeholder={label}
        onChange={e => setState(e.target.value)}
      />
    </label>
  </form>
);

export default function useForm(defaultState, label) {
  const [state, setState] = useState(defaultState);

  return [
    state,
    <FormComponent state={state} setState={setState} label={label} />,
    setState
  ];
}

// App.js
import useForm from "./useForm";

export default function App() {
  const [formValue, Form] = useForm("San Francisco, CA", "Location");

  return (
    <>
      <h1>{formValue}</h1>
      {Form}
    </>
  );
}

Here’s a sandbox