Set view on top of screen react native năm 2024

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Most devices nowadays come with a notch at the top of the screen. So when you're building a mobile application using React Native, you need to make sure that the content of the app's screen is rendered correctly across different types of devices.

In this article, we'll look at two different approaches to making app screens in React Native. Each avoids having the content positioned behind a notch or status bar.

The first approach uses the SafeAreaView component from the React Native components API. The second approach discusses the advantage of using the react-native-safe-area-context open source library and how it provides a cross-platform solution.

The Notch Problem

When you are starting to build a screen in a React Native app, you might use the following code snippet to display text:

import React from 'react';
import { StyleSheet, Text, View } from 'react-native';
export const HomeScreen = () => {
  return (
    
      
        Hello World
      
    
  );
};
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
    backgroundColor: 'red'
  }
});

The above code snippet has a parent View component with a background color of

import { SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';

0. It wraps another View component with a background color of

import { SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';

2 that contains a

import { SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';

3 component to display some text on the screen.

This will display the screen's content on an iOS device like this:

Set view on top of screen react native năm 2024
Without safe area view on iOS

The contents of the nested View component hide behind the status bar and the notch on the iOS device.

On an Android device, the behavior is exactly the same:

Set view on top of screen react native năm 2024
Status bar overlaps the content of the screen on Android

How to Use the SafeAreaView component from React Native

One approach is to use the SafeAreaView component that's available in React Native.

import { SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';

You just use it in place of the top-level View component. It makes sure content within the safe area boundaries is properly rendered around the nested content and applies padding automatically.

So now we can modify the previous code snippet:

import React from 'react';
import { StyleSheet, Text, View, SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';
export const HomeScreen = () => {
  return (
    
      
        Hello World
      
    
  );
};

So that it works perfectly on iOS:

Set view on top of screen react native năm 2024
On using SafeAreaView component

In React Native, this component is only applicable to iOS devices with iOS version 11 or later. Unfortunately, that means it doesn't work for Android devices as the screen's content is still behind the status bar.

Fortunately, there is a cross-platform solution to handle safe areas on notch devices called react-native-safe-area-context. It provides a flexible API to handle safe area insets in JS and works on iOS, Android, and Web.

Start by installing it in your React Native app:

# for plain React Native apps
yarn add react-native-safe-area-context
# install pod dependency for iOS only
npx pod-install
# for Expo apps
expo install react-native-safe-area-context

This library provides a

import { SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';

6 that needs to wrap either your Root Navigator or the screen where you want to handle safe area insets.

For example, in the code snippet below, the

import { SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';

6 wraps the

import { SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';

8 component since there is only one screen in the example app.

import React from 'react';
import { SafeAreaProvider } from 'react-native-safe-area-context';
import { HomeScreen } from './src/screens';
export default function App() {
  return (
    
      
    
  );
}

Now, you can import the SafeAreaView component from the

import React from 'react';
import { StyleSheet, Text, View, SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';
export const HomeScreen = () => {
  return (
    
      
        Hello World
      
    
  );
};

0 library and replace it with the one from React Native.

import React from 'react';
import { StyleSheet, Text, View } from 'react-native';
import { SafeAreaView } from 'react-native-safe-area-context';
export const HomeScreen = () => {
  return (
    
      
        Hello World
      
    
  );
};
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
    backgroundColor: 'red'
  }
});

It works both for iOS and Android:

Set view on top of screen react native năm 2024
The library works on both iOS and Android without any extra configuration

If you give the nested View component a property of

import React from 'react';
import { StyleSheet, Text, View, SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';
export const HomeScreen = () => {
  return (
    
      
        Hello World
      
    
  );
};

2 like this:

You can see the safe area edges on iOS:

Set view on top of screen react native năm 2024

The SafeAreaView acts like a regular View component from React Native and includes additional padding to position the content below the notch or status bar of a device.

It also comes with an

import React from 'react';
import { StyleSheet, Text, View, SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';
export const HomeScreen = () => {
  return (
    
      
        Hello World
      
    
  );
};

5 prop that customizes safe area insets around different edges such as top, bottom, left, and right.

How to Use the useSafeAreaInsets Hook

Another advantage of using this library is that it provides a hook called

import React from 'react';
import { StyleSheet, Text, View, SafeAreaView } from 'react-native';
export const HomeScreen = () => {
  return (
    
      
        Hello World
      
    
  );
};

6 which offers more flexibility. It also gives you more control, and you can apply padding for each edge using a property from this hook.

For example, in the View component below, we only want the padding to be applied at the top edge:

` import { useSafeAreaInsets } from 'react-native-safe-area-context'; export const HomeScreen = () => { const insets = useSafeAreaInsets(); return (


  {children}

); };

`

Conclusion

Handling status bars and notches across different devices become much easier with the react-native-safe-area-context library. Try it out in your next React Native library.

🐙 Source code at this GitHub repository

Visit my blog and follow me on Twitter for more React Native or Expo related content.



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How do I add a view above a view in React Native?

We use the style property position to align one view over another. The position of the view which is beneath the surface should be made relative whereas the position of views above it should be absolute. Make use of properties such as top, left, right and bottom to align the views.

How do you position a view in React Native?

position ​ position in React Native is similar to regular CSS, but everything is set to relative by default, so absolute positioning is always relative to the parent. If you want to position a child using specific numbers of logical pixels relative to its parent, set the child to have absolute position.

How do I make a view overlap React Native?

You have have to use position:'absolute' and put the circle element as the last element of the elements list so it comes to top (no need to use zIndex). also the container div must have styles for child elements to be centered. There won't be an issue since you can position that container div where ever you want.

How do you stack view in React Native?

Stacking in React Native with the CSS position property In other words, it positions the element relative to its nearest positioned ancestor. After applying the position attribute to an element, you'll then use the top , bottom , left , and right attributes to specify exactly where you want the element to be placed.