Developing good mobile apps is about more than just functionality—animations are a key part of an intuitive and pleasing overall user experience. In React Native, a number of well-crafted libraries make it easy to create beautiful, smooth, interactive and performance-based animations.
React Native Animation Libraries
React Native Lottie
Lottie-web is a mobile library for iOS and web that dissolves Adobe After Effects animations with Bodymovin exported as JSON, thereby providing a native experience on mobile. Ideally, designers can build and ship brilliant animations without hiring an engineer by recreating them by hand. It has excellent documentation, is well-performing, and is easy to use.
Github Link: https://github.com/lottie-react-native/lottie-react-native
React Native Reanimated
React Native Reanimated is a high-performance animation library for React Native that allows you to build smooth, gesture-driven, and native-speed animations using declarative JavaScript code that runs on the UI thread.
- Smoother animations (60 FPS even with complex transitions).
- Declarative API for easier animation management.
- Gesture integration with react-native-gesture-handler.
https://docs.swmansion.com/react-native-reanimated
React Native Animatable
To animate things, you must use the Create Animatable Component composer, similar to the Animated create Animated Component. The common components View, Text, and Image are precomposed and exposed under the Animatable namespace. If you have your own component that you wish to animate, simply wrap it with a Animatable.View.
Ex:
Github link: https://github.com/oblador/react-native-animatable
React Native SVG Animations
Animating SVGs in React Native is a powerful way to create interactive icons, charts, loaders, and illustrations with smooth motion.
React Native Flip Card
React Native Flip card is an animation library with a card component that has a motion of flip for React native in Android/iOS. It includes core React Native components, such as Animated, TouchableOpacity, View, and API, to design custom flip card components.
Github link: https://github.com/moschan/react-native-flip-card
React Native Wheel of Fortune
This wheel of fortune depends on D3 shape plugins and React Native SVG. This method allows you to control the look and feel of the spinning wheel and animations. You can also utilize libraries like react-native-reanimated to manage animation logic.
Github link: https://github.com/catalinmiron/react-native-wheel-of-fortune
React Navigation Transitions
Motion is a library that creates animations in React Native with an easy-to-use feature. It also provides a simple API to make shared transitions among animation libraries in React Native. Using React Native Motion, you can swiftly create motions that move from left to right or vice versa.
Github link: https://github.com/plmok61/react-navigation-transitions
Final Words:
Whether you’re building a simple UI or a game-like app, these libraries give you the tools to create animations that enhance user interaction, improve engagement, and add delight.
