Styling a React Native button

Learn how to style a button in a React Native app.

React Native exports a <Button> component that exposes the native button element for Android, iOS, and the web. This component accepts title and onPress props. It does not accept a style prop and doesn't support custom styling.

The closest you can get to styling a <Button> exported from React Native is with the color prop. Below is an example of two buttons on Android, iOS, and the web.

The first button is the default <Button> and the second is another default <Button> with its color prop set to "red".

To create a button with a custom style, you can turn to the <Pressable> component. <Pressable> lets us fully customize the appearance of a pressable element (like a button), in addition to allowing us to customize its behavior.

Here's an example of using <Pressable> to create a button component:

import React from 'react';
import { Text, StyleSheet, Pressable } from 'react-native';

export default function Button(props) {
  const { onPress, title = 'Save' } = props;
  return (
    <Pressable style={styles.button} onPress={onPress}>
      <Text style={styles.text}>{title}</Text>
    </Pressable>
  );
}

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  button: {
    alignItems: 'center',
    justifyContent: 'center',
    paddingVertical: 12,
    paddingHorizontal: 32,
    borderRadius: 4,
    elevation: 3,
    backgroundColor: 'black',
  },
  text: {
    fontSize: 16,
    lineHeight: 21,
    fontWeight: 'bold',
    letterSpacing: 0.25,
    color: 'white',
  },
});

And here's the result of this code:

React Native's <Button> component does not accept a style prop, and its color prop is limited and appears differently across Android, iOS, and the web. With the <Pressable> component, we can create custom buttons that fit our app's design. Those styles will also be the same across Android, iOS, and the web, which will give our apps a consistent look on every platform.