React Native Tab View

A cross-platform Tab View component for React Native.

• Run the example app to see it in action.
• Checkout the example/ folder for source code.

Features

• Smooth animations and gestures
• Scrollable tabs
• Supports both top and bottom tab bars
• Follows Material Design spec
• Highly customizable
• Fully typed with TypeScript

Demo

Installation

Open a Terminal in the project root and run:

yarn add react-native-tab-view

Now we need to install react-native-gesture-handler and react-native-reanimated.

If you are using Expo, to ensure that you get the compatible versions of the libraries, run:

expo install react-native-gesture-handler react-native-reanimated

If you are not using Expo, run the following:

yarn add react-native-reanimated react-native-gesture-handler

If you are using Expo, you are done. Otherwise, continue to the next steps.

Next, we need to link these libraries. The steps depends on your React Native version:

• React Native 0.60 and higher

  On newer versions of React Native, linking is automatic.

  To complete the linking on iOS, make sure you have Cocoapods installed. Then run:

  cd ios
  pod install
  cd ..

• React Native 0.59 and lower

  If you're on an older React Native version, you need to manually link the dependencies. To do that, run:

  react-native link react-native-reanimated
  react-native link react-native-gesture-handler

IMPORTANT: There are additional steps required for react-native-gesture-handler on Android after linking (for all React Native versions). Check the this guide to complete the installation.

We're done! Now you can build and run the app on your device/simulator.

Quick Start

import * as React from 'react';
import { View, StyleSheet, Dimensions } from 'react-native';
import { TabView, SceneMap } from 'react-native-tab-view';

const FirstRoute = () => (
  <View style={[styles.scene, { backgroundColor: '#ff4081' }]} />
);

const SecondRoute = () => (
  <View style={[styles.scene, { backgroundColor: '#673ab7' }]} />
);

const initialLayout = { width: Dimensions.get('window').width };

export default function TabViewExample() {
  const [index, setIndex] = React.useState(0);
  const [routes] = React.useState([
    { key: 'first', title: 'First' },
    { key: 'second', title: 'Second' },
  ]);

  const renderScene = SceneMap({
    first: FirstRoute,
    second: SecondRoute,
  });

  return (
    <TabView
      navigationState={{ index, routes }}
      renderScene={renderScene}
      onIndexChange={setIndex}
      initialLayout={initialLayout}
    />
  );
}

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  scene: {
    flex: 1,
  },
});

Try this example on Snack

More examples on Snack

• Custom Tab Bar
• Lazy Load

API reference

The package exports a TabView component which is the one you'd use to render the tab view, and a TabBar component which is the default tab bar implementation.

TabView

Container component responsible for rendering and managing tabs. Follows material design styles by default.

Basic usage look like this:

<TabView
  navigationState={{ index, routes }}
  onIndexChange={setIndex}
  renderScene={SceneMap({
    first: FirstRoute,
    second: SecondRoute,
  })}
/>

Props

navigationState (required)

State for the tab view. The state should contain the following properties:

• index: a number representing the index of the active route in the routes array
• routes: an array containing a list of route objects used for rendering the tabs

Each route object should contain the following properties:

• key: a unique key to identify the route (required)
• title: title for the route to display in the tab bar
• icon: icon for the route to display in the tab bar
• accessibilityLabel: accessibility label for the tab button
• testID: test id for the tab button

Example:

{
  index: 1,
  routes: [
    { key: 'music', title: 'Music' },
    { key: 'albums', title: 'Albums' },
    { key: 'recents', title: 'Recents' },
    { key: 'purchased', title: 'Purchased' },
  ]
}

TabView is a controlled component, which means the index needs to be updated via the onIndexChange callback.

onIndexChange (required)

Callback which is called on tab change, receives the index of the new tab as argument. The navigation state needs to be updated when it's called, otherwise the change is dropped.

renderScene (required)

Callback which returns a react element to render as the page for the tab. Receives an object containing the route as the argument:

const renderScene = ({ route, jumpTo }) => {
  switch (route.key) {
    case 'music':
      return <MusicRoute jumpTo={jumpTo} />;
    case 'albums':
      return <AlbumsRoute jumpTo={jumpTo} />;
  }
};

You need to make sure that your individual routes implement a shouldComponentUpdate to improve the performance. To make it easier to specify the components, you can use the SceneMap helper.

SceneMap takes an object with the mapping of route.key to React components and returns a function to use with renderScene prop.

import { SceneMap } from 'react-native-tab-view';

...

const renderScene = SceneMap({
  music: MusicRoute,
  albums: AlbumsRoute,
});

Specifying the components this way is easier and takes care of implementing a shouldComponentUpdate method.

Each scene receives the following props:

• route: the current route rendered by the component
• jumpTo: method to jump to other tabs, takes a route.key as it's argument
• position: animated node which represents the current position

The jumpTo method can be used to navigate to other tabs programmatically:

this.props.jumpTo('albums');

All the scenes rendered with SceneMap are optimized using React.PureComponent and don't re-render when parent's props or states change. If you need more control over how your scenes update (e.g. - triggering a re-render even if the navigationState didn't change), use renderScene directly instead of using SceneMap.

IMPORTANT: Do not pass inline functions to SceneMap, for example, don't do the following:

SceneMap({
  first: () => <FirstRoute foo={this.props.foo} />,
  second: SecondRoute,
});

Always define your components elsewhere in the top level of the file. If you pass inline functions, it'll re-create the component every render, which will cause the entire route to unmount and remount every change. It's very bad for performance and will also cause any local state to be lost.

If you need to pass additional props, use a custom renderScene function:

const renderScene = ({ route }) => {
  switch (route.key) {
    case 'first':
      return <FirstRoute foo={this.props.foo} />;
    case 'second':
      return <SecondRoute />;
    default:
      return null;
  }
};

renderTabBar

Callback which returns a custom React Element to use as the tab bar:

import { TabBar } from 'react-native-tab-view';

...

<TabView
  renderTabBar={props => <TabBar {...props} />}
  ...
/>

If this is not specified, the default tab bar is rendered. You pass this props to customize the default tab bar, provide your own tab bar, or disable the tab bar completely.

<TabView
  renderTabBar={() => null}
  ...
/>

renderPager

Callback which returns a custom React Element to use as pager:

tabBarPosition

Position of the tab bar in the tab view. Possible values are 'top' and 'bottom'. Defaults to 'top'.

lazy

Boolean indicating whether to lazily render the scenes. By default all scenes are rendered to provide a smoother swipe experience. But you might want to defer the rendering of unfocused scenes until the user sees them. To enable lazy rendering, set lazy to true.

When you enable lazy, the unfocused screens will usually take some time to render when they come into focus. You can use the renderLazyPlaceholder prop to customize what the user sees during this short period.

lazyPreloadDistance

When lazy is enabled, you can specify how many adjacent routes should be preloaded with this prop. This value defaults to 0 which means lazy pages are loaded as they come into the viewport.

renderLazyPlaceholder

Callback which returns a custom React Element to render for routes that haven't been rendered yet. Receives an object containing the route as the argument. The lazy prop also needs to be enabled.

This view is usually only shown for a split second. Keep it lightweight.

By default, this renders null.

removeClippedSubviews

Boolean indicating whether to remove invisible views (such as unfocused screens) from the native view hierarchy to improve memory usage. Defaults to false.

Note: Don't enable this on iOS where this is buggy and views don't re-appear.

keyboardDismissMode

String indicating whether the keyboard gets dismissed in response to a drag gesture. Possible values are:

• 'auto' (default): the keyboard is dismissed when the index changes.
• 'on-drag': the keyboard is dismissed when a drag begins.
• 'none': drags do not dismiss the keyboard.

swipeEnabled

Boolean indicating whether to enable swipe gestures. Swipe gestures are enabled by default. Passing false will disable swipe gestures, but the user can still switch tabs by pressing the tab bar.

swipeVelocityImpact

Determines how relevant is a velocity while calculating next position while swiping. Defaults to 0.2.

onSwipeStart

Callback which is called when the swipe gesture starts, i.e. the user touches the screen and moves it.

onSwipeEnd

Callback which is called when the swipe gesture ends, i.e. the user lifts their finger from the screen after the swipe gesture.

timingConfig

Configuration object for the timing animation which occurs when tapping on tabs. Supported properties are:

• duration (number)

springConfig

Configuration object for the spring animation which occurs after swiping. Supported properties are:

• damping (number)
• mass (number)
• stiffness (number)
• restSpeedThreshold (number)
• restDisplacementThreshold (number)

springVelocityScale

Number for determining how meaningful is gesture velocity for calculating initial velocity of spring animation. Defaults to 0.

initialLayout

Object containing the initial height and width of the screens. Passing this will improve the initial rendering performance. For most apps, this is a good default:

<TabView
  initialLayout={{ width: Dimensions.get('window').width }}
  ...
/>

position

Animated value to listen to the position updates. The passed position value will be kept in sync with the current position of the tabs. It's useful for accessing the animated value outside the tab view.

const [position] = useState(() => new Animated.Value(0));

return (
  <TabView
    position={position}
    ...
  />
);

sceneContainerStyle

Style to apply to the view wrapping each screen. You can pass this to override some default styles such as overflow clipping:

style

Style to apply to the tab view container.

gestureHandlerProps

An object with props to be passed to underlying PanGestureHandler. For example:

<TabView
  gestureHandlerProps={{
    maxPointers: 1,
    waitFor: [someRef]
  }}
  ...
/>

TabBar

Material design themed tab bar. To customize the tab bar, you'd need to use the renderTabBar prop of TabView to render the TabBar and pass additional props.

For example, to customize the indicator color and the tab bar background color, you can pass indicatorStyle and style props to the TabBar respectively:

const renderTabBar = props => (
  <TabBar
    {...props}
    indicatorStyle={{ backgroundColor: 'white' }}
    style={{ backgroundColor: 'pink' }}
  />
);

//...


return (
  <TabView
    renderTabBar={renderTabBar}
    ...
  />
);

Props

getLabelText

Function which takes an object with the current route and returns the label text for the tab. Uses route.title by default.

<TabBar
  getLabelText={({ route }) => route.title}
  ...
/>

getAccessible

Function which takes an object with the current route and returns a boolean to indicate whether to mark a tab as accessible. Defaults to true.

getAccessibilityLabel

Function which takes an object with the current route and returns a accessibility label for the tab button. Uses route.accessibilityLabel by default if specified, otherwise uses the route title.

<TabBar
  getAccessibilityLabel={({ route }) => route.accessibilityLabel}
  ...
/>

getTestID

Function which takes an object with the current route and returns a test id for the tab button to locate this tab button in tests. Uses route.testID by default.

<TabBar
  getTestID={({ route }) => route.testID}
  ...
/>

renderIcon

Function which takes an object with the current route, focused status and color and returns a custom React Element to be used as a icon.

<TabBar
  renderIcon={({ route, focused, color }) => (
    <Icon
      name={focused ? 'abums' : 'albums-outlined'}
      color={color}
    />
  )}
  ...
/>

renderLabel

Function which takes an object with the current route, focused status and color and returns a custom React Element to be used as a label.

<TabBar
  renderLabel={({ route, focused, color }) => (
    <Text style={{ color, margin: 8 }}>
      {route.title}
    </Text>
  )}
  ...
/>

renderIndicator

Function which takes an object with the current route and returns a custom React Element to be used as a tab indicator.

renderBadge

Function which takes an object with the current route and returns a custom React Element to be used as a badge.

onTabPress

Function to execute on tab press. It receives the scene for the pressed tab, useful for things like scroll to top.

By default, tab press also switches the tab. To prevent this behavior, you can call preventDefault:

<TabBar
  onTabPress={({ route, preventDefault }) => {
    if (route.key === 'home') {
      preventDefault();

      // Do something else
    }
  }}
  ...
/>

onTabLongPress

Function to execute on tab long press, use for things like showing a menu with more options

activeColor

Custom color for icon and label in the active tab.

inactiveColor

Custom color for icon and label in the inactive tab.

pressColor

Color for material ripple (Android >= 5.0 only).

pressOpacity

Opacity for pressed tab (iOS and Android < 5.0 only).

scrollEnabled

Boolean indicating whether to enable scrollable tabs.

If you set scrollEnabled to true, you should also specify a width in tabStyle to improve the initial render.

bounces

Boolean indicating whether the tab bar bounces when scrolling.

tabStyle

Style to apply to the individual tab items in the tab bar.

By default, all tab items take up the same pre-calculated width based on the width of the container. If you want them to take their original width, you can specify width: 'auto' in tabStyle.

indicatorStyle

Style to apply to the active indicator.

indicatorContainerStyle

Style to apply to the container view for the indicator.

labelStyle

Style to apply to the tab item label.

contentContainerStyle

Style to apply to the inner container for tabs.

style

Style to apply to the tab bar container.

Using with other libraries

React Navigation

If you want to integrate the tab view with React Navigation's navigation system, e.g. want to be able to navigate to a tab using navigation.navigate etc, you can use the following official integrations:

• @react-navigation/material-top-tabs for React Navigation 5
• react-navigation-tabs for React Navigation 4

Note that some functionalities are not available with the React Navigation 4 integration because of the limitations in React Navigation. For example, it's possible to dynamically change the rendered tabs.

React Native Navigation (Wix)

If you use React Native Navigation by Wix on Android, you need to wrap all your screens that uses react-native-tab-view with gestureHandlerRootHOC from react-native-gesture-handler. Refer react-native-gesture-handler's docs for more details.

Mobx

Normally we recommend to use React's local state to manage the navigation state for the tabs. But if you need to use Mobx to manage the navigation state, there is a gotcha you need to be aware of.

Mobx relies on data being accessed in render to work properly. However, we don't use the index value inside render in the library, so Mobx fails to track any changes to the index. You might see that the tabs don't change on pressing on the tab bar if you have a state like this:

@observable navigationState = {
  index: 0,
  routes: [
    { key: 'music', title: 'Music' },
    { key: 'albums', title: 'Albums' },
  ],
};

To workaround this, we need to make sure that index is accessed in render. We can refactor our state to something like this for it to work:

@observer
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
  @observable index = 0;

  @observable routes = [
    { key: 'music', title: 'Music' },
    { key: 'albums', title: 'Albums' },
  ];

  @action handleIndexChange = index => {
    this.index = index;
  };

  render() {
    return (
      <TabView
        navigationState={{ index: this.index, routes: this.routes }}
        renderScene={({ route }) => {
          /* ... */
        }}
        onIndexChange={this.handleIndexChange}
      />
    );
  }
}

Optimization Tips

Avoid unnecessary re-renders

The renderScene function is called every time the index changes. If your renderScene function is expensive, it's good idea move each route to a separate component if they don't depend on the index, and use shouldComponentUpdate or React.memo in your route components to prevent unnecessary re-renders.

For example, instead of:

const renderScene = ({ route }) => {
  switch (route.key) {
    case 'home':
      return (
        <View style={styles.page}>
          <Avatar />
          <NewsFeed />
        </View>
      );
    default:
      return null;
  }
};

Do the following:

const renderScene = ({ route }) => {
  switch (route.key) {
    case 'home':
      return <HomeComponent />;
    default:
      return null;
  }
};

Where <HomeComponent /> is a PureComponent if you're using class components:

export default class HomeComponent extends React.PureComponent {
  render() {
    return (
      <View style={styles.page}>
        <Avatar />
        <NewsFeed />
      </View>
    );
  }
}

Or, wrapped in React.memo if you're using function components:

function HomeComponent() {
  return (
    <View style={styles.page}>
      <Avatar />
      <NewsFeed />
    </View>
  );
}

export default React.memo(HomeComponent);

Avoid one frame delay

We need to measure the width of the container and hence need to wait before rendering some elements on the screen. If you know the initial width upfront, you can pass it in and we won't need to wait for measuring it. Most of the time, it's just the window width.

For example, pass the following initialLayout to TabView:

const initialLayout = {
  height: 0,
  width: Dimensions.get('window').width,
};

The tab view will still react to changes in the dimension and adjust accordingly to accommodate things like orientation change.

Optimize large number of routes

If you've a large number of routes, especially images, it can slow the animation down a lot. You can instead render a limited number of routes.

For example, do the following to render only 2 routes on each side:

const renderScene = ({ route }) => {
  if (Math.abs(index - routes.indexOf(route)) > 2) {
    return <View />;
  }

  return <MySceneComponent route={route} />;
};

Avoid rendering TabView inside ScrollView

Nesting the TabView inside a vertical ScrollView will disable the optimizations in the FlatList components rendered inside the TabView. So avoid doing it if possible.

Use lazy and renderLazyPlaceholder props to render routes as needed

The lazy option is disabled by default to provide a smoother tab switching experience, but you can enable it and provide a placeholder component for a better lazy loading experience. Enabling lazy can improve initial load performance by rendering routes only when they come into view. Refer the prop reference for more details.

Use removeClippedSubviews to improve memory usage

On Android, enabling removeClippedSubviews can improve memory usage. This option can also affect rendering performance negatively, so it is disabled by default. So make sure to test it when enabling it. Refer the prop reference for more details.

Contributing

While developing, you can run the example app to test your changes.

Make sure your code passes TypeScript and ESLint. Run the following to verify:

yarn typescript
yarn lint

To fix formatting errors, run the following:

yarn lint -- --fix

Remember to add tests for your change if possible.