Top 7 React Native UI Components Libraries for 2023

Thomas Sentre
4 min readJul 20, 2023

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Photo by Jan Meeus on Unsplash

As we embark on the journey of learning a new framework or technology, we inevitably find ourselves seeking ways to optimize our development process. The burning question in our minds echoes loudly: “How can we expedite our progress and create remarkable applications in record time?” The answer, as it turns out, lies in harnessing the potential of UI components.

Just like a master artist employs fine tools to craft a masterpiece, React Native developers can supercharge their productivity with the aid of awe-inspiring UI components. So, in this article, I’ll reveal 7 game-changing UI components libraries that will make your React Native development faster, easier, and more efficient than ever before!

Tamagui

Tamagui is a user-friendly UI kit designed to enhance your react-native app development. It includes themes, media queries, and typed inline styles, along with an optimizing compiler. Its goal is to bridge the gap between React Native and React Native web applications by offering essential app elements like styling, theming, and cross-platform components, all while ensuring top-notch performance.

React Native Elements

React Native Elements is a widely-used UI component framework specifically designed for React Native applications. It offers a comprehensive set of pre-designed components that are customizable, making it effortless to create visually appealing and responsive user interfaces. With this library, you can easily add common UI elements like buttons, icons, input fields, and cards, ensuring a consistent and polished look across various platforms. It simplifies the development process and enables the creation of professional-looking apps with minimal effort.

React Native Paper

React Native Paper is a UI library built for React Native applications. It provides a collection of beautiful, ready-to-use components and styles that enhance the overall look and feel of your app. With React Native Paper, you can effortlessly create sleek and modern user interfaces.

Like React Native Elements, React Native Paper library comes with a range of customizable components like buttons, cards, dialogs, and more, allowing you to tailor them to your app’s specific needs. Additionally, it follows the Material Design guidelines, ensuring a familiar and consistent user experience for Android and iOS users alike.

Nativebase

Looking for an easy way to build visually stunning and responsive mobile apps in React Native? Meet NativeBase — your ultimate UI component library! NativeBase offers a rich collection of pre-built, customizable components that will supercharge your development process and elevate your app’s user interface.

With NativeBase, you can effortlessly create polished and consistent designs, thanks to its adherence to a unified design pattern. It provides an extensive selection of UI elements, including buttons, cards, form inputs, headers, and much more — all readily available to enhance your app’s look and feel.

NativeWind

NativeWind appears to be a framework that leverages the power of Tailwind CSS as a scripting language to create a universal style system for React Native. By adopting Tailwind CSS, NativeWind likely allows developers to define styles using a utility-first approach, making it efficient and easy to manage styles across different components and screens. One of the key advantages of using NativeWind is its ability to enable sharing components between platforms. This means that you can create UI components with NativeWind and use them seamlessly in both Android and iOS projects, potentially reducing development time and maintaining consistency in the user experience across platforms.

If you’re interested in adopting a utility-first approach and improving the cross-platform development experience for React Native, NativeWind could be a valuable tool worth exploring further.

UI Kitten

UI Kitten is a popular UI framework for React Native. It offers elegant and customizable components inspired by the Eva Design System. With UI Kitten, you can easily create beautiful and modern user interfaces for your mobile apps. The library includes various components like buttons, cards, inputs, and more, which you can easily personalize to match your app’s style. It follows a consistent design system, ensuring a polished user experience across devices. Plus, UI Kitten supports theming, allowing you to change the app’s look effortlessly. If you want to enhance the visual appeal of your React Native app, UI Kitten is a great choice!

Restyle

Restyle is a utility-first styling library for React Native that focuses on providing a simple and efficient way to style components. It allows you to create styles using a declarative API, similar to CSS, making it easier to manage and maintain styles in React Native apps.

With Restyle, you can define styles using a range of utility functions, such as padding, margin, background color, and typography properties. These utilities can be combined and reused to create consistent styles throughout your application. The library also supports theming, enabling you to change the entire look and feel of your app by updating a theme object. Restyle promotes the concept of separating styles from components, making your codebase more organized and easier to maintain. It encourages reusability, making it faster to develop and style your app’s user interface.

If you prefer a utility-first approach to styling and want a straightforward solution for managing styles in React Native, Restyle is a compelling option to consider.

Summary

Choosing the right UI library for your React Native app can make a significant difference in development efficiency and visual appeal. Libraries like React Native Elements provide a wide range of components for easy development and consistency.

If you prefer a more customized approach, NativeBase and UI Kitten offer beautiful, themable components that let you create unique interfaces.

For a utility-first styling method, Restyle simplifies managing styles with a declarative API.

Remember, the best library depends on your project’s needs and your personal preferences. No matter which one you choose, these UI frameworks will undoubtedly enhance your React Native development and help you build outstanding mobile apps. Happy coding!

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Thomas Sentre

Software Developer | Content Creator | Cloud Enthusiast