CommonModule vs BrowserModule in angular

Question

I am pretty new to the world of Angular. What is the difference between CommonModule vs BrowserModule and why one should be preferred over the other?

Answer 1

What you have to understand is, with Angular, you create modular application and there are two types of modules. One is root module and another is feature module.

• Root module imports the BrowserModule (if you are rendering in browser). This has the same stuffs as CommonModule but also stuffs that are used for rendering.
• Now if you are creating a feature module, since you already have BrowserModule imported in your root module, it does not make sense and it's an overhead to import the Browser module in your feature module. Also, importing CommonModule  frees feature modules for use on any target platform (e.g. native mobile platform), not just browsers. That's why you import CommonModule in your feature modules and BrowserModule in your root module.

Answer 2

From the docs

BrowserModule provides services that are essential to launch and run a browser app.

BrowserModule also re-exports CommonModule from @angular/common, which means that components in the AppModule module also have access to the Angular directives every app needs, such as NgIf and NgFor.

whereas

CommonModule (all the basics of Angular templating: bindings, *ngIf, *ngFor…), except in the first app module, because it’s already part of the BrowserModule

Also read this.