8 React Native Component Libraries Every Mobile Developer Should Know

React Native or RN is a popular open-source JavaScript-based mobile application framework. It allows developers to build natively rendered mobile applications for both Android and iOS operating systems. Components are essentially like JavaScript functions. React Native accepts input in the form of props and returns React elements on the screen. 

Essentially there are two types of components-- native component and core component. 

Developers building for Android write views on Kotlin or Java and use Swift or Objective-C for iOS development. However, with React Native, these views can be called for using JavaScript using React components. During the programme's run time, React Native creates the Android or iOS views for these components. Backed by the same views as iOS and Android, these React Native applications, thus built, feel, look and perform like any other application. And these platform-backed components are called Native Components. 

Originally, React Native came with a set of ready-to-use components, enabling developers to start building their applications immediately. 

Today, we list the top React Native Component Libraries for 2021: 

React Native Maps 

The React Native Map component for iOS and Android offers customisable map components. These provide intuitive and react-like APIs for declaratively controlling map features. Features include-- changing map view region, overlaying elements on the map, customising markers and map style. 

For installation, use: 

npm install react-native-maps --save-exact

For more information, click here. 

NativeBase 

This mobile-first accessible component library is built to provide a customisable design system across iOS, Android and web for React and React Native. In addition, it can be integrated with React ARIA and React Native ARIA.

NativeBase is powered by Styled System to help developers build custom UI components-- 40 of them, including button, checkbox, flex, and stack. In addition, it is highly themeable, allowing customisation of app themes and component styles. 

For more information, click here. 

React Native Camera 

The Camera component for React Native supports photographs, videos, face detection (for both Android and iOS), barcode scanning and text recognition. This allows developers to communicate with a device camera without having to worry about the native code. 

For more information, click here. 

React Native Paper 

React Native Paper offers components with Material design standards for React Native-- Android and iOS (following platform adaptation guidelines). Additionally, it follows material design guidelines and theming support. It is an open-source project. 

For more information, click here. 

React Native Bit 

Bit is a tool for component-driven application development. It is an extensible toolchain for systems that are faster to develop, simpler to understand, test, and maintain, and easier to collaborate on. 

Bit’s USP lies in allowing developers to build components outside an application and then use them to compose as many applications as they want. Components can be added or removed from applications to alter their functionality. 

To install, use: 

bvm install 

For more information, click here. 

React Native Ignite 

Ignite is a popular React Native boilerplate. It is a collection of all of Infinite Red’s opinions on patterns, packages and stack in one place. Ignite apps include React Native, React Navigation 5, MobX-React-Lite, AsyncStorage, TypeScript, MobX-State-Tree and is Flipper-ready. 

According to the official website, developers save as much as two to four weeks of their time on their React Native project by using Ignite. 

For more information, click here. 

React Native Lottie

A picture is worth 1,000 words. And making this possible for mobile applications is Lottie. The Lottie component for React Native is a library for Android, iOS, Web and Windows that parses Adobe After Effects animations, exported as JSON, with Bodymovin and renders them on mobile and the web. Thus, allowing designers to create and ship animations without engineers recreating them by hand. 

For installation, use: 

lottie-react-native

For more information, click here. 

React Native Navigation 

As the name suggests, React Native Navigation is a native navigation solution for Expo and React Native apps for Android and iOS. Navigation is a cross-platform JavaScript API, and requires iOS 11 and Android 5.0 and above.  

Navigation is platform-specific and customisable. Moreover, it is extensible at every layer. That is, developers can write their navigators or replace the user-facing API.

To install, use: 

react-native-navigation

For more information, click here.