Unlocking the Power of React Native Reanimated

What is React Native Reanimated?

Reanimated is an open-source React Native library that allows developers to implement animations with ease. With over 6.5k stars on GitHub, it’s a popular choice among developers looking to add some magic to their apps.

New Features in React Native Reanimated

Recently, the developer team released version 3, which brings significant improvements and new features. Here are some of the key features:

• Shifting to Fabric: Reanimated now uses the Fabric architecture under the hood, bringing huge security and performance upgrades.
• Ending support for Reanimated 1: The team has removed support for the deprecated Reanimated 1 API, so it’s time to upgrade your dependencies and refactor your code.
• Building for Android: Reanimated no longer ships prebuilt binaries for Android, so you’ll need to have the Android NDK pre-installed before building your app.

Migrating to Reanimated v3

Ready to make the switch? Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you migrate to Reanimated v3:

1. Project setup: Initialize a blank React Native project and install the newest version of react-native-reanimated.

   npm install react-native-reanimated

2. Switching to Fabric:
   • • Enable Fabric for Android by setting the newArchEnabled property to true:

   android/build.gradle:
   newArchEnabled true

   • • Run the necessary command for iOS:

   npx pod-install

3. Creating an animation:

   
   import { useSharedValue, useAnimatedStyles } from 'eact-native-reanimated';
   
   const progress = useSharedValue(0);
   
   const styles = useAnimatedStyles(() => {
     return {
       transform: [{ translateX: progress.value * 100 }],
     };
   });
   
   return (
     <Animated.View style={[styles]}>
       {/* Your animation content */}
     </Animated.View>
   );
       

Smoothing out the Animation

Notice that your animation might be a bit jittery? No worries! Use the withSpring method to smooth it out and create a more fluid animation.

import { withSpring } from 'eact-native-reanimated';

const styles = useAnimatedStyles(() => {
  return {
    transform: [{ translateX: withSpring(progress.value * 100) }],
  };
});

Alternatives to Reanimated

While Reanimated is a powerful tool, there are other alternatives available, such as:

• React Native Reanimatable
• Lottie Web
• React Spring

However, Reanimated offers more granular control and performance via worklets, making it a top choice for many developers.