react-native-appearance

react-native-appearance

Polyfill for Appearance API to detect preferred color scheme (light/dark) in React Native 0.59, 0.60 and perhaps more (ymmv outside of these two!). The Appearance API will likely be available in react-native@>=0.61.

This library is currently iOS only, and on iOS < 13 the color scheme will always be 'no-preference'.

Getting started

Install the library using either Yarn:

yarn add react-native-appearance

or npm:

npm install --save react-native-appearance

You then 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 to manually link the framework or link using Cocoapods by adding this to your Podfile:

pod 'react-native-appearance', :path => '../node_modules/react-native-appearance'

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.get('colorScheme');

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

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

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