Migrate from React Navigation

Learn how to migrate a project using React Navigation to Expo Router.

Both React Navigation and Expo Router are Expo frameworks for routing and navigation. Expo Router is a wrapper around React Navigation and many of the concepts are the same.

Pitch

Along with all the benefits of React Navigation, Expo Router enables automatic deep linking, type safety, deferred bundling, static rendering on web, and more.

Anti-pitch

If your app uses a custom getPathFromState or getStateFromPath component, it may not be a good fit for Expo Router. If you're using these functions to support shared routes then you should be fine as Expo Router has built-in support for this.

Recommendations

We recommend making the following modifications to your codebase before beginning the migration:

• Split React Navigation screen components into individual files. For example, if you have <Stack.Screen component={HomeScreen} />, then ensure the HomeScreen class is in its own file.
• Convert the project to TypeScript. This will make it easier to spot errors that may occur during the migration.
• Convert relative imports to typed aliases. For example, ../../components/button.tsx to @/components/button before starting the migration. This makes it easier to move screens around the filesystem without having to update the relative paths.
• Migrate away from resetRoot. This is used to "restart" the app while running. This is generally considered bad practice, and you should restructure your app's navigation so this never needs to happen.
• Rename the initial route to index. Expo Router considers the route that is opened on launch to match /, React Navigation users will generally use something such as "Home" for the initial route.

Refactor search parameters

Refactor screens to use serializable top-level query parameters. We recommend this in React Navigation as well.

In Expo Router, search parameters can only serialize top-level values such as number, boolean, and string. React Navigation doesn't have the same restrictions, so users can sometimes pass invalid parameters like Functions, Objects, Maps, and so on.

If your code has something similar to the below:

import { useNavigation } from '@react-navigation/native';

const navigation = useNavigation();

navigation.push('Followers', {
  onPress: profile => {
    navigation.push('User', { profile });
  },
});

Consider restructuring so the function can be accessed from the "followers" screen. In this case, you can access the router and push directly from the "followers" screen.

Eagerly load UI

It's common in React Native apps to return null from the root component while assets and fonts are loading. This is bad practice and generally unsupported in Expo Router. If you absolutely must defer rendering, then ensure you don't attempt to navigate to any screens.

Historically this pattern exists because React Native will throw errors if you use custom fonts that haven't loaded yet. We changed this upstream in React Native 0.72 (SDK 49) so the default behavior is to swap the default font when the custom font loads. If you'd like to hide individual text elements until a font has finished loading, write a wrapper <Text>, which returns null until the font has loaded.

On web, returning null from the root will cause static rendering to skip all of the children, resulting in no searchable content. This can be tested by using "View Page Source" in Chrome, or by disabling JavaScript and reloading the page.

Migration

Delete unused or managed code

Expo Router automatically adds react-native-safe-area-context support.

- import { SafeAreaProvider } from "react-native-safe-area-context";

export default function App() {
  return (
-    <SafeAreaProvider>
      <MyApp />
-    </SafeAreaProvider>
  )
}

Expo Router does not add react-native-gesture-handler (as of v3), so you'll have to add this yourself if you are using Gesture Handler or <Drawer /> layout. Avoid using this package on web since it adds a lot of JavaScript that is often unused.

Copy screens to the app directory

Create an app directory at the root of your repo, or in a root src directory.

Layout the structure of your app by creating files according to the creating pages guide. Kebab-case and lowercase letters are considered best practice for route filenames.

Replace navigators with directories, for example:

function HomeTabs() {
  return (
    <Tab.Navigator>
      <Tab.Screen name="Home" component={Home} />
      <Tab.Screen name="Feed" component={Feed} />
    </Tab.Navigator>
  );
}

function App() {
  return (
    // NavigationContainer is managed by Expo Router.
    <NavigationContainer
      linking={
        {
          // ...linking configuration
        }
      }
    >
      <Stack.Navigator>
        <Stack.Screen name="Settings" component={Settings} />
        <Stack.Screen name="Profile" component={Profile} />
        <Stack.Screen
          name="Home"
          component={HomeTabs}
          options={{
            title: 'Home Screen',
          }}
        />
      </Stack.Navigator>
    </NavigationContainer>
  );
}

Expo Router:

• Rename the "main" route from Home to index to ensure it matches the / path.
• Convert names to lowercase.
• Move all the screens to the appropriate file locations inside the app directory. This may take some experimenting.

import { Stack } from 'expo-router';

export default function RootLayout() {
  return (
    <Stack>
      <Stack.Screen
        name="(home)"
        options={
          {
            title: 'Home Screen',
          }
        }
      />
    </Stack>
  );
}

The tab navigator will be moved to a subdirectory.

import { Tabs } from 'expo-router';

export default function HomeLayout() {
  return <Tabs />;
}

Use Expo Router hooks

React Navigation v6 and lower will pass the props { navigation, route } to every screen. This pattern is going away in React Navigation, and we never introduced it to the Expo Router.

Instead, migrate navigation to the useRouter hook.

+ import { useRouter } from 'expo-router';

export default function Page({
-  navigation
}) {
-  navigation.push('User', { user: 'bacon' });

+  const router = useRouter();
+  router.push('/users/bacon');
}

Similarly, migrate from the route prop to the useLocalSearchParams hook.

+ import { useLocalSearchParams } from 'expo-router';

export default function Page({
-  route
}) {
-  const user = route?.params?.user;

+  const { user } = useLocalSearchParams();
}

To access the navigation.navigate, import the navigation prop from useNavigation hook.

+ import { useNavigation } from 'expo-router';

export default function Page({
+  const navigation = useNavigation();

  return (
    <Button onPress={navigation.navigate('screenName')}>
  )
})

Migrate the Link component

React Navigation and Expo Router both provide Link components. However, Expo's Link component uses href instead of to.

// React Navigation
<Link to="Settings" />

// Expo Router
<Link href="/settings" />

React Navigation users will often create a custom Link component with the useLinkProps hook to control the child component. This isn't necessary in Expo Router, instead, use the asChild prop.

Share screens across navigators

It's common for React Navigation apps to reuse a set of routes across multiple navigators. This is generally used with tabs to ensure each tab can push any screen.

In Expo Router, you can either migrate to shared routes or create multiple files and re-export the same component from them.

When you use groups or shared routes, you can navigate to specific tabs by using the fully qualified route name, for example, /(home)/settings instead of /settings.

Migrate screen tracking events

You may have your screen tracking setup according to our React Navigation screen tracking guide, update it according to the Expo Router screen tracking guide.

Use platform-specific components for screens

Refer to the platform-specific modules guide for info on switching UI based on the platform.

Replace the NavigationContainer

The global React Navigation <NavigationContainer /> is completely managed in Expo Router. Expo Router provides systems for achieving the same functionality as the NavigationContainer without needing to use it directly.

import { useRouter } from 'expo-router';

function Example() {
  const router = useRouter();

  return (
    <Text
      onPress={() => {
        // Go to the initial route of the application.
        router.replace('/');
      }}>
      Reset App
    </Text>
  );
}

import { ThemeProvider, DarkTheme, DefaultTheme, useTheme } from '@react-navigation/native';
import { Slot } from 'expo-router';

export default function RootLayout() {
  return (
    <ThemeProvider value={DarkTheme}>
      <Slot />
    </ThemeProvider>
  );
}

Rewrite custom navigators

If your project has a custom navigator, you can rewrite this or port it to Expo Router.

To port, simply use the withLayoutContext function:

import { createCustomNavigator } from './my-navigator';

export const CustomNavigator = withLayoutContext(createCustomNavigator().Navigator);

To rewrite, use the Navigator component, which wraps the useNavigationBuilder hook from React Navigation.

The return value of useNavigationBuilder can be accessed with the Navigator.useContext() hook from inside the <Navigator /> component. Properties can be passed to useNavigationBuilder using the props of the <Navigator /> component, this includes initialRouteName, screenOptions, router.

All of the children of a <Navigator /> component will be rendered as-is.

• Navigator.useContext: Access the React Navigation state, navigation, descriptors, and router for the custom navigator.
• Navigator.Slot: A React component used to render the currently selected route. This component can only be rendered inside a <Navigator /> component.

Example

Custom layouts have an internal context that is ignored when using the <Slot /> component without a <Navigator /> component wrapping it.

import { View } from 'react-native';
import { TabRouter } from '@react-navigation/native';

import { Navigator, usePathname, Slot, Link } from 'expo-router';

export default function App() {
  return (
    <Navigator router={TabRouter}>
      <Header />
      <Slot />
    </Navigator>
  );
}

function Header() {;
  const pathname = usePathname();

  return (
    <View>
      <Link href="/">Home</Link>
      <Link
        href="/profile"
        style={[pathname === '/profile' && { color: 'blue' }]}>
        Profile
      </Link>
      <Link href="/settings">Settings</Link>
    </View>
  );
}

Use Expo Router's Splash Screen wrapper

Expo Router wraps expo-splash-screen and adds special handling to ensure it's hidden after the navigation mounts, and whenever an unexpected error is caught. Simply migrate from importing expo-splash-screen to importing SplashScreen from expo-router.

Navigation state observation

If you're observing the navigation state directly, migrate to the usePathname, useSegments, and useGlobalSearchParams hooks.

Pass params to nested screens

Instead of using the nested screen navigation events, use a qualified href:

// React Navigation
navigation.navigate('Account', {
  screen: 'Settings',
  params: { user: 'jane' },
});

// Expo Router
router.push({ pathname: '/account/settings', params: { user: 'jane' } });

Set initial routes for deep linking and server navigation

In React Navigation, you can use the initialRouteName property of the linking configuration. In Expo Router, use layout settings.

Reset navigation state

You can use the reset action from the React Navigation library to reset the navigation state. It is dispatched using the useNavigation hook from Expo Router to access the navigation prop.

In the below example, the navigation prop is accessible from the useNavigation hook and the CommonActions.reset action from @react-navigation/native. The object specified in the reset action replaces the existing navigation state with the new one.

import { useNavigation } from 'expo-router'
import { CommonActions } from '@react-navigation/native'

export default function Screen() {
  const navigation = useNavigation();

  const handleResetAction = () => {
    navigation.dispatch(CommonActions.reset({
      routes: [{key: "(tabs)", name: "(tabs)"}]
    }))
  }

  return (
    <>
      {/* ...rest of the code */}
      <Button title='Reset' onPress={handleResetAction} />
    </>
  );
}

Migrate TypeScript types

Expo Router can automatically generate statically typed routes, this will ensure you can only navigate to valid routes.

Additional information

React Navigation themes

React Navigation navigators <Stack>, <Drawer>, and <Tabs> use a shared appearance provider. In React Navigation, you set the theme for the entire app using the <NavigationContainer /> component. Expo Router manages the root container so that you can set the theme using the ThemeProvider directly.

import { ThemeProvider, DarkTheme, DefaultTheme, useTheme } from '@react-navigation/native';
import { Slot } from 'expo-router';

export default function RootLayout() {
  return (
    <ThemeProvider value={DarkTheme}>
      <Slot />
    </ThemeProvider>
  );
}

You can use this technique at any layer of the app to set the theme for a specific layout. The current theme can be accessed via useTheme hook from @react-navigation/native.

React Navigation Elements

The @react-navigation/elements library provides a set of UI elements and helpers that can be used to build a navigation UI. These components are designed to be composable and customizable. You can reuse the default functionality from the library or build your navigator's UI on top of it.

To use it with Expo Router, you need to install the library:

To learn more about the components and utilities the library provides, see Elements library documentation.