This project aims to expose native navigation container components to React Native. It is not designed to be used as a standalone library but rather as a dependency of a full-featured navigation library.
Supported platforms
- iOS
- Android
- tvOS
- Windows
- Web
Installation
iOS
Installation on iOS should be completely handled with auto-linking, if you have ensured pods are installed after adding this module, no other actions should be necessary
Android
On Android the View state is not persisted consistently across Activity restarts, which can lead to crashes in those cases. It is recommended to override the native Android method called on Activity restarts in your main Activity, to avoid these crashes.
For most people using an app built from the react-native template, that means editing MainActivity.java, likely located in android/app/src/main/java/<your package name>/MainActivity.java
You should add this code, which specifically discards any Activity state persisted during the Activity restart process, to avoid inconsistencies that lead to crashes.
import android.os.Bundle;
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(null);
}For people that must handle cases like this, there is a more detailed discussion of the difficulties in a series of related comments.
Need to use a custom Kotlin version?
Since v3.6.0 react-native-screens has been rewritten with Kotlin. Kotlin version used in this library defaults to 1.4.10.
If you need to use a different Kotlin version, set kotlinVersion ext property in your project's android/build.gradle and the library will use this version accordingly:
buildscript {
ext {
...
kotlinVersion = "1.4.10"
}
}
Disclaimer: react-native-screens requires Kotlin 1.3.50 or higher.
Windows
Installation on Windows should be completely handled with auto-linking when using React Native Windows 0.63+. For earlier versions, you must manually link the native module.
How can I take advantage of that?
Screens are already integrated with the React Native's most popular navigation library react-navigation and Expo.
Supported react-native version
| version | react-native version |
|---|---|
| 3.0.0+ | 0.62.0+ |
| 2.0.0+ | 0.60.0+ |
Usage with react-navigation
Screens support is built into react-navigation starting from version 2.14.0 for all the different navigator types (stack, tab, drawer, etc).
To configure react-navigation to use screens instead of plain RN Views for rendering screen views, simply add this library as a dependency to your project:
# bare React Native project
yarn add react-native-screens
# if you use Expo managed workflow
expo install react-native-screensJust make sure that the version of react-navigation you are using is 2.14.0 or higher.
You are all set
Experimental support for react-freeze
You have to use React Native 0.64 or higher, react-navigation 5.x or 6.x and react-native-screens >= v3.9.0
Since v3.9.0, react-native-screens comes with experimental support for react-freeze. It uses the React Suspense mechanism to prevent parts of the React component tree from rendering, while keeping its state untouched.
To benefit from this feature, enable it in your entry file (e.g. App.js) with this snippet:
import { enableFreeze } from 'react-native-screens';
enableFreeze(true);Want to know more? Check out react-freeze README
Found a bug? File an issue here or directly in react-freeze repository.
Disabling react-native-screens
If, for whatever reason, you'd like to disable native screens support and use plain React Native Views add the following code in your entry file (e.g. App.js):
import { enableScreens } from 'react-native-screens';
enableScreens(false);You can also disable the usage of native screens per navigator with detachInactiveScreens.
Using createNativeStackNavigator with React Navigation
To take advantage of the native stack navigator primitive for React Navigation that leverages UINavigationController on iOS and Fragment on Android, please refer:
- for React Navigation >= v6 to the Native Stack Navigator part of React Navigation documentation
- for React Navigation v5 to the README in react-native-screens/native-stack
- for older versions to the README in react-native-screens/createNativeStackNavigator
Interop with react-native-navigation
React-native-navigation library already uses native containers for rendering navigation scenes so wrapping these scenes with <ScreenContainer> or <Screen> component does not provide any benefits. Yet if you would like to build a component that uses screens primitives under the hood (for example a view pager component) it is safe to use <ScreenContainer> and <Screen> components for that as these work out of the box when rendered on react-native-navigation scenes.
Interop with other libraries
This library should work out of the box with all existing react-native libraries. If you experience problems with interoperability please report an issue.
Guide for navigation library authors
If you are building a navigation library you may want to use react-native-screens to have control over which parts of the React component tree are attached to the native view hierarchy.
To do that, react-native-screens provides you with the components documented here.
Common problems
Problems with header on iOS
- Focused search bar causes new screens to have incorrect header
- Scrollable content gets cut off by the header with a search bar
- RefreshControl does not work properly with NativeStackNavigator and largeTitle
Solution
Use ScrollView with prop contentInsetAdjustmentBehavior=“automatic” as a main container of the screen and set headerTranslucent: true in screen options.
Other problems
Contributing
There are many ways to contribute to this project. See CONTRIBUTING guide for more information. Thank you for your interest in contributing!
License
React native screens library is licensed under The MIT License.
Credits
This project has been build and is maintained thanks to the support from Shopify, Expo.io and Software Mansion
