The Best React Native UI Components for Developers

React Native is one of the most popular cross-platform frameworks for building mobile applications. Developers like the platform because it’s open-source, reusable, cost-effective and, importantly, UI-focused. After all, the user experience is the key way that applications maximise user engagement and become more appealing, attractive and interactive. By building an appealing application, you can increase user engagement, build brand loyalty and grow your business. 

As a framework that focuses heavily on the user interface, there are a huge array of UI components available to React Native developers, giving them an unrivalled choice and the ability to save time and money in their projects. 

What is a UI Component?

React Native UI components are elements, or interactive building blocks, that are isolated so that they can be reused several times. The ready-made interface elements are extremely useful when creating applications and can help save time, speed up development and build fully robust applications. React Native components can be organised into five key categories:

• Action – helping users to achieve an aim, i.e. buttons
• Communication – delivering helpful information, i.e. progress indicators
• Containment – holding information and actions, i.e. lists
• Navigation – helping users move through the UI, i.e. menus
• Selection – letting users specify choices, i.e. radio buttons

Of course, with so many to choose from, it pays to have an idea of where to look first. Fortunately, there are many great UI component libraries that React Native developers can turn to to quickly hit the ground running with their development project. 

The Top X React Native Component Libraries

React Native UI component libraries help developers streamline the development process by using pre-built packages. It’s important that these components are user-friendly, include detailed documentation and deliver the performance, quality, speed and service expected. Fortunately, the following eight libraries deliver on trustworthiness, price, documentation and more and are a great place for React Native developers to start when developing a cross-platform application. 

1. React Native Maps

Many applications include maps to visualise location details quickly to the user. This is especially relevant in relation to applications offering things such as delivery services. React Native Maps is a library of custom maps. By using the custom maps, developers can create a variety of user experiences. It’s also possible to combine the components with the Animated API to animate the zoom and placement of the map as well as draw polygons and polylines. 

2. React Native Vision Camera

As people are used to using their mobile phone cameras within apps, it is a feature that many developers like to include; it enables users to scan QR codes and barcodes, make payments and access information. However, configuring the camera for iOS and Android can be complicated and time-consuming, it requires face detection, text recognition, bar code scanning and more. React Native Vision Camera is a library that helps with all of this and delivers security without using structured native code. 

3. React Native Element

This cross-platform UI component library includes many contributed parts that are easy for developers to modify. React Native Element has badges, avatars, social symbol buttons and more and allows developers to create their own theme. It’s a major UI component kit that provides a well-packaged prepared set of components. With a strong API look and feel, the ready-made package solutions can remove a lot of the burden from developers. 

4. React Native Paper

React Native Paper is a React Native UI library with over 30 production-ready and customisable elements. All the elements adhere to material design guidelines; in fact, the library is based on Google’s Material Design. Developers can create interactive experiences to meet nearly every use case, including interface logic, animations and accessibility. What’s more, the library supports dark and bright themes and enables developers to easily switch between the two. With Paper, developers can quickly add simple and easily-adjustable UI components to their applications.

5. React Native Snap Carousel

There are several options for displaying a collection of photos in an app, but a carousel is amongst the most well-used. React Native Snap Carousel is a library that includes several layouts, demonstrations, parallax pictures and other features. The components enable developers to display information across various mobile devices and create stunning carousels or sliders. With full documentation and several recommendations, developers can use the library to quickly build solutions for displaying photographs that will delight their users. 

6. Shoutem User Interface Kit

In the same way that you’d add plugins to a website, Shoutem enables developers to add extensions to their applications. There are options for photos, videos, products, events and more. All of the components in the library are customisable but start with a consistent default style. This means that developers can build complex components without having to define styles manually. With Shoutem UI, developers can quickly create professional solutions. 

7. React Native Gifted Chat

Having a messaging chat is a well-known feature of apps that delivers real-time assistance to its users. As the name suggests, React Native Gifted Chat helps developers to set up a chat UI for React Native. The TypeScript comments are fully editable, including the capability to load past conversations, clip messages to the clipboard and integrate multiple links. The library is a great place to start for developers wanting to build a full chat UI library for their app. 

8. Nachos UI Kit

Nachos UI is a library with over 30 UI components, such as badges, buttons and carousels, that can be easily added to any development project. The web-based components are attractive and can be easily customised. What’s more, the library includes Jest Snapshot test and prettier. Adding pre-styled inputs to an existing component is as easy as importing them. 

React Native UI components are fundamental for developers to create interactive and engaging user interfaces. However, it pays to have a React Native developer who has the expertise to select the right UI components, customise them effectively and deliver an incredible user experience.