react-native-appearance

Access operating system appearance information on iOS, Android, and web. Currently supports detecting preferred color scheme (light/dark).

Installation

Installation instructions vary depending on whether you're using a managed Expo project or a bare React Native project.

Managed Expo project

This library is supported in Expo SDK 35+ (SDK 35 includes iOS support, SDK 36 and higher includes support for all platforms).

expo install react-native-appearance

Then, in app.json, include "userInterfaceStyle" to listen to the device's appearance settings:

{
  "expo": {
    /*
        Supported user interface styles. If left blank, "light" will be used. Use "automatic" if you would like to support either "light" or "dark" depending on device settings.
      */
    "userInterfaceStyle": "automatic" | "light" | "dark"
  }
}

Android support and web support are available on SDK36+.

Bare React Native project

yarn add react-native-appearance

Linking

If you are not using AndroidX on your project already (this is the default on React Native 0.60+, but not on lower versions) you will want to use the jetifier npm package. Install the package with yarn add -D jetifier and then under scripts add "postinstall": "jetify -r". Next run yarn jetify.

After installing the package you need to link the native parts of the library for the platforms you are using. The easiest way to link the library is using the CLI tool by running this command from the root of your project:

react-native link react-native-appearance

If you can't or don't want to use the CLI tool, you can also manually link the library using the instructions below (click on the arrow to show them):

Manually link the library on iOS

Either follow the [instructions in the React Native documentation](https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/linking-libraries-ios#manual-linking) to manually link the framework or link using [Cocoapods](https://cocoapods.org) by adding this to your `Podfile`: ```ruby pod 'react-native-appearance', :path => '../node_modules/react-native-appearance' ```

Manually link the library on Android

1. Open up `android/app/src/main/java/[...]/MainApplication.java` - Add `import io.expo.appearance.RNCAppearancePackage;` to the imports at the top of the file - Add `new RNCAppearancePackage()` to the list returned by the `getPackages()` method 2. Append the following lines to `android/settings.gradle`: ``` include ':react-native-appearance' project(':react-native-appearance').projectDir = new File(rootProject.projectDir, '../node_modules/react-native-appearance/android') ``` 3. Insert the following lines inside the dependencies block in `android/app/build.gradle`: ``` implementation project(':react-native-appearance') ```

Configuration

iOS configuration

In Expo managed projects, add `ios.userInterfaceStyle` to your `app.json`: ```json { "expo": { "ios": { "userInterfaceStyle": "automatic" } } } ``` In bare React Native apps, you can configure supported styles with the [UIUserInterfaceStyle](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/information_property_list/uiuserinterfacestyle) key in your app `Info.plist`.

Android configuration

Add the `uiMode` flag in `AndroidManifest.xml`: ```xml ``` Implement the `onConfigurationChanged` method in `MainActivity.java`: ```java import android.content.Intent; // <--- import import android.content.res.Configuration; // <--- import public class MainActivity extends ReactActivity { ...... // copy these lines @Override public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) { super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig); Intent intent = new Intent("onConfigurationChanged"); intent.putExtra("newConfig", newConfig); sendBroadcast(intent); } ...... } ```

Usage

First, you need to wrap your app in the AppearanceProvider. At the root of your app, do the following:

import { AppearanceProvider } from 'react-native-appearance';

export default () => (
  <AppearanceProvider>
    <App />
  </AppearanceProvider>
);

Now you can use Appearance and useColorScheme anywhere in your app.

import { Appearance, useColorScheme } from 'react-native-appearance';

/**
 * Get the current color scheme
 */
Appearance.getColorScheme();

/**
 * Subscribe to color scheme changes with a hook
 */
function MyComponent() {
  const colorScheme = useColorScheme();
  if (colorScheme === 'dark') {
    // render some dark thing
  } else {
    // render some light thing
  }
}

/**
 * Subscribe to color scheme without a hook
 */
const subscription = Appearance.addChangeListener(({ colorScheme }) => {
  // do something with color scheme
});

// Remove the subscription at some point
subscription.remove();

Attribution

This was mostly written by Facebook for inclusion in React Native core.