Express 4 handlebars render without layout

Assuming you are using express-handlebars you can specify a different layout from your route/controller when you call the render method. To get rid of the layout altogether you can set the layout to false.

router.get('/', function(req, res) {
    res.render('home', {layout: false});
});

https://github.com/ericf/express-handlebars#layouts