React Native Safe Area Context

A library with a flexible API for accessing the device's safe area inset information.

This library is listed in the Expo SDK reference because it is included in Expo Go. You may use any library of your choice with development builds.

react-native-safe-area-context provides a flexible API for accessing device safe area inset information. This allows you to position your content appropriately around notches, status bars, home indicators, and other such device and operating system interface elements. It also provides a SafeAreaView component that you can use in place of View to automatically inset your views to account for safe areas.

Installation

If you are installing this in an existing React Native app, start by installing expo in your project. Then, follow the additional instructions provided by the library's README or documentation.

API

import {
  SafeAreaView,
  SafeAreaProvider,
  SafeAreaInsetsContext,
  useSafeAreaInsets,
} from 'react-native-safe-area-context';

Components

import { SafeAreaView } from 'react-native-safe-area-context';

function SomeComponent() {
  return (
    <SafeAreaView>
      <View />
    </SafeAreaView>
  );
}

Hooks

import { useSafeAreaInsets } from 'react-native-safe-area-context';

function HookComponent() {
  const insets = useSafeAreaInsets();

  return <View style={{ paddingTop: insets.top }} />;
}

Types

Guides

Context

To use safe area context, you need to add SafeAreaProvider in your app root component.

You may need to add it in other places too, including at the root of any modals any routes when using react-native-screen.

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

function App() {
  return <SafeAreaProvider>...</SafeAreaProvider>;
}

Then, you can use useSafeAreaInsets() hook and also consumer API to access inset data:

import { SafeAreaInsetsContext } from 'react-native-safe-area-context';

function Component() {
  return (
    <SafeAreaInsetsContext.Consumer>
      {insets => <View style={{ paddingTop: insets.top }} />}
    </SafeAreaInsetsContext.Consumer>
  );
}

Optimization

If you can, use SafeAreaView. It's implemented natively so when rotating the device, there is no delay from the asynchronous bridge.

To speed up the initial render, you can import initialWindowMetrics from this package and set as the initialMetrics prop on the provider as described in Web SSR. You cannot do this if your provider remounts, or you are using react-native-navigation.

import { SafeAreaProvider, initialWindowMetrics } from 'react-native-safe-area-context';

function App() {
  return <SafeAreaProvider initialMetrics={initialWindowMetrics}>...</SafeAreaProvider>;
}

Web SSR

If you are doing server side rendering on the web, you can use initialSafeAreaInsets to inject values based on the device the user has, or simply pass zero. Otherwise, insets measurement will break rendering your page content since it is async.

Migrating from CSS

Before

In a web-only app, you would use CSS environment variables to get the size of the screen's safe area insets.

div {
  padding-top: env(safe-area-inset-top);
  padding-left: env(safe-area-inset-left);
  padding-bottom: env(safe-area-inset-bottom);
  padding-right: env(safe-area-inset-right);
}

After

Universally, the hook useSafeAreaInsets() can provide access to this information.

import { useSafeAreaInsets } from 'react-native-safe-area-context';

function App() {
  const insets = useSafeAreaInsets();
  return (
    <View
      style={{
        paddingTop: insets.top,
        paddingLeft: insets.left,
        paddingBottom: insets.bottom,
        paddingRight: insets.right,
      }}
    />
  );
}