Showing a route in a modal on top of the current page, without losing the underlying page.
Intercepting Routes — using the (.), (..), (..)(..), or (...) folder conventions — let you 'intercept' a navigation and render its route in a different context than normal, most commonly opening a detail view (a photo, a product) in a modal on top of the current page instead of navigating away from it entirely. A hard refresh or a direct link to that same URL still renders the full, standalone page as usual.
This is the mechanism behind the familiar pattern of clicking a photo in a feed to open it in a modal, while still being able to copy, share, or refresh that exact URL and land on the complete standalone page instead of a broken modal-only view. It's typically paired with Parallel Routes — one slot rendering the modal, another rendering everything else — so dismissing the modal (navigating back) doesn't unmount the page underneath it.
What you'll walk away knowing