react-native-tvos

react-native-tvos

Apple TV and Android TV support for React Native are maintained here and in the corresponding react-native-tvos NPM package, and not in the core repo. This is a full fork of the main repository, with only the changes needed to support Apple TV and Android TV.

Releases of react-native-tvos will be based on a public release of react-native; e.g. the 0.72.4-0 release of this package will be derived from the 0.72.4 release of react-native. All releases of this repo will follow the 0.xx.x-y format, where x digits are from a specific RN core release, and y represents the additional versioning from this repo.

Releases will be published on npmjs.org and you may find the latest release version here: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-native-tvos?activeTab=versions or use the tag @latest

You will find the relevant tvOS support and maintenance within the branches marked tvos-v0.xx.x;

To build your project for Apple TV, you should change your package.json imports to import react-native as follows, so that this package is used instead of the core react-native package.

"react-native": "npm:react-native-tvos@latest",

You cannot use this package and the core react-native package simultaneously in a project.

Hermes JS support

As of the 0.71 release, Hermes is fully working on both Apple TV and Android TV, and is enabled by default.

React Native new architecture (Fabric) support

• Apple TV: Modify your app's Podfile to set the :fabric_enabled value to true in both iOS and tvOS targets. After that, run pod install to pick up the additional pods needed for the new architecture. Some components (TVTextScrollView, TabBarIOS) have not been reimplemented in the new architecture so they will show up as an "unimplemented component".
• Android TV: To enable Fabric, modify android/gradle.properties in your app and set newArchEnabled=true, then rebuild your app.

Typescript

Typescript types for TV-specific components and APIs have been added to types/public.

General support for TV

TV device support has been implemented with the intention of making existing React Native applications "just work" on TV, with few or no changes needed in the JavaScript code for the applications.

The RNTester app supports Apple TV and Android TV. In this repo, RNTester/Podfile and RNTester/RNTesterPods.xcodeproj have been modified to work for tvOS. Run pod install, then open RNTesterPods.xcworkspace and build.

You should also install yarn globally, as it should be used instead of npm for working in React Native projects.

Build changes

• Native layer for Apple TV: React Native Xcode projects all now have Apple TV build targets, with names ending in the string '-tvOS'. Changes in the React Native podspecs in 0.73 now require that your application Podfile only have one target. This repo supports either an iOS target or a tvOS target, but both targets should not be active at the same time. The new app template now has the iOS target commented out.
• Maven artifacts for Android TV: In 0.71, the React Native Android prebuilt archives are published to Maven instead of being included in the NPM. We are following the same model, except that the Maven artifacts will be in group io.github.react-native-tvos instead of com.facebook.react. The @react-native/gradle-plugin module has been upgraded so that the Android dependencies will be detected correctly during build.

(New) Project creation using the Expo CLI

Pitfall: Make sure you do not globally install react-native or react-native-tvos. If you have done this the wrong way, you may get error messages like ld: library not found for -lPods-TestApp-tvOS.

We strongly recommend Yarn as the package manager.

To create a new project, use yarn create react-native-app as shown below. (This will install the Expo tool create-react-native-app for you if it is not already present.)

New projects created this way will automatically have properly configured iPhone and Apple TV targets created in their XCode projects, and will have the Android manifest correctly configured for both Android phone and Android TV. New projects are set up to use the Expo CLI; the Expo dependency and react-native.config.js are included in the new app template.

# Init an app called 'TestApp', note that you must not be in a node module (directory with node_modules sub-directory) for this to work
yarn create react-native-app TestApp --template https://github.com/react-native-tvos/react-native-template-typescript-tv/tree/tv-release-0.73.0 --template-path template
cd TestApp
# Now build and start the app in the tvOS Simulator - this will only work on a macOS machine.
# This command can also be run via "yarn tvos".
npx expo run:ios --scheme MyApp-tvOS --device "Apple TV"
# You can also build and start the app on an iOS phone simulator.
# This command can also be run via "yarn ios".
npx expo run:ios
# or specify a simulator:
npx expo run:ios --scheme MyApp --device "iPhone 15"
# This command builds and starts the app in an Android TV emulator or a phone emulator (needs to be created in advance).
# This command can also be run via "yarn android".
npx expo run:android --device tv_api_31

See this document for more details on Expo CLI functionality. (Note that many of these features require that Expo SDK modules be built into your app. Expo SDK support requires a different project configuration as described below.)

(New) Using the Expo SDK with TV apps

Starting with the Expo SDK 50 preview, and react-native-tvos 0.73.x, it will be possible to create Expo apps, and build them for TV via a new config plugin.

This functionality will be new in Expo SDK 50, and will be considered an experimental feature for now.

The fastest way to generate a new project is described in the TV Example in the Expo examples repo.

Besides most of the core Expo modules, these also work on TV:

• expo-av
• expo-image
• expo-localization
• expo-updates

TV does NOT support dev client (dev menu, dev launcher) at this time. TV does NOT support Expo Router at this time.

Code changes

• JavaScript layer: Support for TV has been added to the Platform React Native API.

var Platform = require('Platform');
var running_on_tv = Platform.isTV;

// If you want to be more specific and only detect devices running tvOS
// (but no Android TV devices) you can use:
var running_on_apple_tv = Platform.isTVOS;

• Common codebase for iOS and tvOS: Since tvOS and iOS share most Objective-C and JavaScript code in common, most documentation for iOS applies equally to tvOS. Apple TV specific changes in native code are all wrapped by the TARGET_OS_TV define. These include changes to suppress APIs that are not supported on tvOS (e.g. web views, sliders, switches, status bar, etc.), and changes to support user input from the TV remote or keyboard.

• Common codebase for Android phone and Android TV: Apps built for Android using this repo will run on both Android phone and Android TV. Most of the changes for TV are specific to handling focus-based navigation on a TV using the D-Pad on the remote control.

• Access to touchable controls: The Touchable mixin has code added to detect focus changes and use existing methods to style the components properly and initiate the proper actions when the view is selected using the TV remote, so TouchableWithoutFeedback, TouchableHighlight and TouchableOpacity will "just work" on both Apple TV and Android TV. In particular:

  • onFocus will be executed when the touchable view goes into focus
  • onBlur will be executed when the touchable view goes out of focus
  • onPress will be executed when the touchable view is actually selected by pressing the "select" button on the TV remote.

• Pressable controls: The Pressable API works with TV. Additional onFocus and onBlur props are provided to allow you to customize behavior when a Pressable enters or leaves focus. Similar to the pressed state that is true while a user is pressing the component on a touchscreen, the focused state will be true when it is focused on TV. PressableExample in RNTester has been modified appropriately.

• TV remote/keyboard input: Application code that needs to implement custom handling of TV remote events can create an instance of TVEventHandler and listen for these events. For a more convenient API, we provide useTVEventHandler.

import { TVEventHandler, useTVEventHandler } from 'react-native';

// Functional component

const TVEventHandlerView: () => React.Node = () => {
  const [lastEventType, setLastEventType] = React.useState('');

  const myTVEventHandler = evt => {
    setLastEventType(evt.eventType);
  };

  useTVEventHandler(myTVEventHandler);

  return (
    <View>
      <TouchableOpacity onPress={() => {}}>
        <Text>
          This example enables an instance of TVEventHandler to show the last
          event detected from the Apple TV Siri remote or from a keyboard.
        </Text>
      </TouchableOpacity>
      <Text style={{color: 'blue'}}>{lastEventType}</Text>
    </View>
  );

};

// Class based component

class Game2048 extends React.Component {
  _tvEventHandler: any;

  _enableTVEventHandler() {
    this._tvEventHandler = new TVEventHandler();
    this._tvEventHandler.enable(this, function(cmp, evt) {
      if (evt && evt.eventType === 'right') {
        cmp.setState({board: cmp.state.board.move(2)});
      } else if(evt && evt.eventType === 'up') {
        cmp.setState({board: cmp.state.board.move(1)});
      } else if(evt && evt.eventType === 'left') {
        cmp.setState({board: cmp.state.board.move(0)});
      } else if(evt && evt.eventType === 'down') {
        cmp.setState({board: cmp.state.board.move(3)});
      } else if(evt && evt.eventType === 'playPause') {
        cmp.restartGame();
      }
    });
  }

  _disableTVEventHandler() {
    if (this._tvEventHandler) {
      this._tvEventHandler.disable();
      delete this._tvEventHandler;
    }
  }

  componentDidMount() {
    this._enableTVEventHandler();
  }

  componentWillUnmount() {
    this._disableTVEventHandler();
  }

• Flipper: We do not support Flipper.

• LogBox: The new LogBox error/warning display (which replaced YellowBox in 0.63) is working as expected on TV platforms, after a few adjustments to make the controls accessible to the focus engine.

• Dev Menu support: On the Apple TV simulator, cmd-D will bring up the developer menu, just like on iOS. To bring it up on a real Apple TV device, make a long press on the play/pause button on the remote. (Please do not shake the Apple TV device, that will not work :) ). Android TV dev menu behavior is the same as on Android phone.

• TV remote animations on Apple TV: RCTTVView native code implements Apple-recommended parallax animations to help guide the eye as the user navigates through views. The animations can be disabled or adjusted with new optional view properties.

• Back navigation with the TV remote menu button: The BackHandler component, originally written to support the Android back button, now also supports back navigation on the Apple TV using the menu button or '<' button on the Apple TV remote, and the back button as usual on Android TV remote.

• TVEventControl for AppleTV: (Formerly "TVMenuControl") This module provides methods to enable and disable features on the Apple TV Siri remote:

  • enableTVMenuKey/disableTVMenuKey: Method to enable and disable the menu key gesture recognizer, in order to fix an issue with Apple's guidelines for menu key navigation (see https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/18930). The RNTester app uses these methods to implement correct menu key behavior for back navigation.
  • enableTVPanGesture/disableTVPanGesture: Methods to enable and disable detection of finger touches that pan across the touch surface of the Siri remote. See TVEventHandlerExample in the RNTester app for a demo.
  • enableGestureHandlersCancelTouches/disableGestureHandlersCancelTouches: Methods to turn on and turn off cancellation of touches by the gesture handlers in RCTTVRemoteHandler (see #366). Cancellation of touches is turned on (enabled) by default in 0.69 and earlier releases.

• TVFocusGuideView: This component provides support for Apple's UIFocusGuide API and is implemented in the same way for Android TV, to help ensure that focusable controls can be navigated to, even if they are not directly in line with other controls. An example is provided in RNTester that shows two different ways of using this component.

Prop	Value	Description
destinations	any[]?	Array of Components to register as destinations of the FocusGuideView
autoFocus	boolean?	If true, TVFocusGuide will automatically manage focus for you. It will redirect the focus to the first focusable child on the first visit. It also remembers the last focused child and redirects the focus to it on the subsequent visits. destinations prop takes precedence over this prop when used together.
trapFocus* (Up, Down, Left, Right)	Prevents focus escaping from the container for the given directions.

More information on the focus handling improvements above can be found in this article.

• Next Focus Direction: the props nextFocus* on View should work as expected on iOS too (previously android only). One caveat is that if there is no focusable in the nextFocusable* direction next to the starting view, iOS doesn't check if we want to override the destination.

• TVTextScrollView: On Apple TV, a ScrollView will not scroll unless there are focusable items inside it or above/below it. This component wraps ScrollView and uses tvOS-specific native code to allow scrolling using swipe gestures from the remote control.