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.

Fabric

To learn about how to use react-native-screens with Fabric architecture, head over to Fabric README. Instructions on how to run Fabric Example within this repo can be found in the FabricExample README.

Supported platforms

• iOS
• Android
• tvOS
• visionOS
• Windows
• Web

Installation

iOS

Installation on iOS is completely handled with auto-linking, if you have ensured pods are installed after adding this module, no other actions are 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. Please note that the override code should not be placed inside MainActivityDelegate, but rather directly in MainActivity.

1import android.os.Bundle;
2
3public class MainActivity extends ReactActivity {
4
5    //...code
6
7    //react-native-screens override
8    @Override
9    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
10        super.onCreate(null);
11    }
12
13    public static class MainActivityDelegate extends ReactActivityDelegate {
14        //...code
15    }
16}

1import android.os.Bundle;
2
3class MainActivity: ReactActivity() {
4
5    //...code
6
7    //react-native-screens override
8    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
9      super.onCreate(null);
10    }
11}

For people that must handle cases like this, there is a more detailed discussion of the difficulties in a series of related comments.

buildscript {
    ext {
        ...
        kotlinVersion = "1.4.10"
    }
}

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

Below we present tables with mapping of the library version to the last supported react-native version. These tables are for the 4.x line of the library. For compat tables of 3.x line please see readme on the 3.x branch.

Support for Fabric

Fabric is React Native's default rendering system since 0.76.

Here's a table with summary of supported react-native versions:

Support for Paper

Paper is the legacy rendering system.

Here's a table with summary of supported react-native versions with old architecture turned on:

Usage with react-navigation

[!CAUTION] JS API of the native stack has been moved from react-native-screens/native-stack to @react-navigation/native-stack since version v6. Currently, native stack v5 (imported from react-native-screens/native-stack) is deprecated and will be removed in the upcoming minor release. react-native-screens v4 will support only @react-navigation/native-stack v7.

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:

1# bare React Native project
2yarn add react-native-screens
3
4# if you use Expo managed workflow
5npx expo install react-native-screens

Just make sure that the version of react-navigation you are using is 2.14.0 or higher.

You are all set 🎉 – when screens are enabled in your application code react-navigation will automatically use them instead of relying on plain React Native Views.

Experimental support for react-freeze

You have to use React Native 0.68 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:

1import { enableFreeze } from 'react-native-screens';
2
3enableFreeze(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):

1import { enableScreens } from 'react-native-screens';
2
3enableScreens(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

FullWindowOverlay

Native iOS component for rendering views straight under the Window. Based on RCTPerfMonitor. You should treat it as a wrapper, providing full-screen, transparent view which receives no props and should ideally render one child View, being the root of its view hierarchy. For the example usage, see https://github.com/software-mansion/react-native-screens/blob/main/apps/src/tests/Test1096.tsx

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.

React Native Screens is created by Software Mansion

Since 2012 Software Mansion is a software agency with experience in building web and mobile apps. We are Core React Native Contributors and experts in dealing with all kinds of React Native issues. We can help you build your next dream product – Hire us.