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Themes

Themes allow you to change the colors and fonts of various components provided by React Navigation. You can use themes to:

  • Customize the colors and fonts to match your brand
  • Provide light and dark themes based on the time of the day or user preference

Basic usage​

To pass a custom theme, you can pass the theme prop to the navigation container.

import * as React from 'react';
import { createStaticNavigation, DefaultTheme } from '@react-navigation/native';

const MyTheme = {
  ...DefaultTheme,
  colors: {
    ...DefaultTheme.colors,
    background: 'rgb(140, 201, 125)',
    primary: 'rgb(255, 45, 85)',
  },
};

const Navigation = createStaticNavigation(MyTabs);

export default function App() {
  return (
    <Navigation
      theme={MyTheme}
    />
  );
}
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You can change the theme prop dynamically and all the components will automatically update to reflect the new theme. If you haven't provided a theme prop, the default theme will be used.

Properties​

A theme is a JS object containing a list of colors to use. It contains the following properties:

  • dark (boolean): Whether this is a dark theme or a light theme
  • colors (object): Various colors used by react navigation components:
    • primary (string): The primary color of the app used to tint various elements. Usually you'll want to use your brand color for this.
    • background (string): The color of various backgrounds, such as the background color for the screens.
    • card (string): The background color of card-like elements, such as headers, tab bars etc.
    • text (string): The text color of various elements.
    • border (string): The color of borders, e.g. header border, tab bar border etc.
    • notification (string): The color of notifications and badge (e.g. badge in bottom tabs).
  • fonts (object): Various fonts used by react navigation components:
    • regular (object): Style object for the primary font used in the app.
    • medium (object): Style object for the semi-bold variant of the primary font.
    • bold (object): Style object for the bold variant of the primary font.
    • heavy (object): Style object for the extra-bold variant of the primary font.

The style objects for fonts contain the following properties:

  • fontFamily (string): The name of the font family (or font stack on Web) to use, e.g. Roboto or Helvetica Neue. The system fonts are used by default.
  • fontWeight (string): The font weight to use. Valid values are normal, bold, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900.

When creating a custom theme, you will need to provide all of these properties.

Example theme
const WEB_FONT_STACK =
  'system-ui, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"';

const MyTheme = {
  dark: false,
  colors: {
    primary: 'rgb(255, 45, 85)',
    background: 'rgb(242, 242, 242)',
    card: 'rgb(255, 255, 255)',
    text: 'rgb(28, 28, 30)',
    border: 'rgb(199, 199, 204)',
    notification: 'rgb(255, 69, 58)',
  },
  fonts: Platform.select({
    web: {
      regular: {
        fontFamily: WEB_FONT_STACK,
        fontWeight: '400',
      },
      medium: {
        fontFamily: WEB_FONT_STACK,
        fontWeight: '500',
      },
      bold: {
        fontFamily: WEB_FONT_STACK,
        fontWeight: '600',
      },
      heavy: {
        fontFamily: WEB_FONT_STACK,
        fontWeight: '700',
      },
    },
    ios: {
      regular: {
        fontFamily: 'System',
        fontWeight: '400',
      },
      medium: {
        fontFamily: 'System',
        fontWeight: '500',
      },
      bold: {
        fontFamily: 'System',
        fontWeight: '600',
      },
      heavy: {
        fontFamily: 'System',
        fontWeight: '700',
      },
    },
    default: {
      regular: {
        fontFamily: 'sans-serif',
        fontWeight: 'normal',
      },
      medium: {
        fontFamily: 'sans-serif-medium',
        fontWeight: 'normal',
      },
      bold: {
        fontFamily: 'sans-serif',
        fontWeight: '600',
      },
      heavy: {
        fontFamily: 'sans-serif',
        fontWeight: '700',
      },
    },
  }),
};

Providing a theme will take care of styling of all the official navigators. React Navigation also provides several tools to help you make your customizations of those navigators and the screens within the navigators can use the theme too.

Built-in themes​

React Navigation provides basic light and dark themes on all platforms:

DefaultTheme​

primary
rgb(0 122 255)
background
rgb(242 242 242)
card
rgb(255 255 255)
text
rgb(28 28 30)
border
rgb(216 216 216)
notification
rgb(255 59 48)

DarkTheme​

primary
rgb(10 132 255)
background
rgb(1 1 1)
card
rgb(18 18 18)
text
rgb(229 229 231)
border
rgb(39 39 41)
notification
rgb(255 69 58)

The built-in themes use system fonts which vary based on the platform.

They can be imported from the @react-navigation/native package:

import { DefaultTheme, DarkTheme } from '@react-navigation/native';

Keeping the native theme in sync​

If you're changing the theme in the app, native UI elements such as Alert, ActionSheet etc. won't reflect the new theme. You can do the following to keep the native theme in sync:

React.useLayoutEffect(() => {
  const colorScheme = theme.dark ? 'dark' : 'light';

  if (Platform.OS === 'web') {
    document.documentElement.style.colorScheme = colorScheme;
  } else {
    Appearance.setColorScheme(colorScheme);
  }
}, [theme.dark]);

Alternatively, you can use the useColorScheme hook to get the current native color scheme and update the theme accordingly.

Using the operating system preferences​

On iOS 13+ and Android 10+, you can get user's preferred color scheme ('dark' or 'light') with the (useColorScheme hook).

import {
  createStaticNavigation,
  DefaultTheme,
  DarkTheme,
} from '@react-navigation/native';
import { View, Text, useColorScheme } from 'react-native';

const Navigation = createStaticNavigation(MyTabs);

export default function App() {
  const scheme = useColorScheme();

  return (
    <Navigation
      theme={scheme === 'dark' ? DarkTheme : DefaultTheme}
    />
  );
}
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Using the current theme in your own components​

To gain access to the theme in any component that is rendered inside the navigation container:, you can use the useTheme hook. It returns the theme object:

import {
  createStaticNavigation,
  DefaultTheme,
  DarkTheme,
  useTheme,
} from '@react-navigation/native';
import { View, Text, TouchableOpacity, useColorScheme } from 'react-native';

function MyButton() {
  const { colors } = useTheme();

  return (
    <TouchableOpacity
      style={{
        backgroundColor: colors.card,
      }}
    >
      <Text style={{ color: colors.text }}>Button!</Text>
    </TouchableOpacity>
  );
}
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