Redux docs for bindActionCreators states that:

The only use case for bindActionCreators is when you want to pass some action creators down to a component that isn't aware of Redux, and you don't want to pass dispatch or the Redux store to it.

What would be an example where bindActionCreators would be used/needed?

Which kind of component would not be aware of Redux?

What are the advantages/disadvantages of both options?

//actionCreator
import * as actionCreators from './actionCreators'

function mapStateToProps(state) {
  return {
    posts: state.posts,
    comments: state.comments
  }
}

function mapDispatchToProps(dispatch) {
  return bindActionCreators(actionCreators, dispatch)
}

vs

function mapStateToProps(state) {
  return {
    posts: state.posts,
    comments: state.comments
  }
}

function mapDispatchToProps(dispatch) {
  return {
    someCallback: (postId, index) => {
      dispatch({
        type: 'REMOVE_COMMENT',
        postId,
        index
      })
    }
  }
}

I don't think that the most popular answer, actually addresses the question.

All of the examples below essentially do the same thing and follow the no "pre-binding" concept.

// option 1
const mapDispatchToProps = (dispatch) => ({
  action: () => dispatch(action())
})


// option 2
const mapDispatchToProps = (dispatch) => ({
  action: bindActionCreators(action, dispatch)
})


// option 3
const mapDispatchToProps = {
  action: action
}

Option #3 is just a shorthand for option #1 , so the real question why one would use option #1 vs option #2. I've seen both of them used in react-redux codebase, and I find it is rather confusing.

I think the confusion comes from the fact that all of the examples in react-redux doc uses bindActionCreators while the doc for bindActionCreators (as quoted in the question itself) says to not use it with react-redux.

I guess the answer is consistency in the codebase, but I personally prefer explicitly wrapping actions in dispatch whenever needed.

99% of the time, it's used with the React-Redux connect() function, as part of the mapDispatchToProps parameter. It can be used explicitly inside the mapDispatch function you provide, or automatically if you use the object shorthand syntax and pass an object full of action creators to connect.

The idea is that by pre-binding the action creators, the component you pass to connect() technically "doesn't know" that it's connected - it just knows that it needs to run this.props.someCallback(). On the other hand, if you didn't bind action creators, and called this.props.dispatch(someActionCreator()), now the component "knows" that it's connected because it's expecting props.dispatch to exist.

I wrote some thoughts on this topic in my blog post Idiomatic Redux: Why use action creators?.