Important

The new React Native 0.76, released on Oct 23, 2024, finally supports a cross-platform shadow!

This new feature should be preferred over this library.

I can only wholeheartedly appreciate everyone's support and kindness over the past almost 4 years and celebrate having reached 35k weekly and 2M total downloads 🤗

For professional inquiries regarding senior-level expertise in TypeScript, React, and React Native, contact me at [email protected].

react-native-shadow-2

react-native-shadow is dead for years. This is an improved version with more functionalities, Typescript support and written from scratch. It's not required to define its size: the shadow is smartly applied on the first render and then precisely reapplied on the following ones.

It solves the old React Native issue of not having the same shadow appearence and usage for Android, iOS and Web.

The ethercreative/react-native-shadow-generator website won't give you very similar results between the two platforms, for the reasons I described here. It's also not as customizable as this library.

Compatible with Android, iOS and Web. And Expo!

Supports RTL.

🍟 Demo - Expo Snack Sandbox

Give this library a quick try!

📰 v7 Changelog - 2022-08-08

❗ Read the FAQ below!

💿 Installation

1. First install react-native-svg.

The latest react-native-svg version is recommended, including if using Expo.

2. Then install react-native-shadow-2:

npm i react-native-shadow-2
# or
yarn add react-native-shadow-2

📖 Usage

import { Shadow } from 'react-native-shadow-2';

<Shadow>
  <Text style={{ margin: 20, fontSize: 20 }}>🙂</Text>
</Shadow>

<Shadow distance={15} startColor={'#eb9066d8'} endColor={'#ff00ff10'} offset={[3, 4]}>
  <View style={{ borderTopStartRadius: 24, borderBottomEndRadius: 0, borderRadius: 10, backgroundColor: '#c454f0dd' }}>
    <Text style={{ margin: 20, fontSize: 20 }}>🤯</Text>
  </View>
</Shadow>

Properties

All properties are optional.

Property	Description	Type	Default
startColor	The initial gradient color of the shadow.	string	'#00000020'
endColor	The final gradient color of the shadow.	string	Transparent startColor. Explanation.
distance	How far the shadow goes.	number	10
offset	Moves the shadow. Negative x moves it left/start, negative y moves it up. Accepts 'x%' values. Defining this will default paintInside to true, as it's the usual desired behaviour.	[x: string | number, y: string | number]	[0, 0]
paintInside	Apply the shadow below/inside the content. startColor is used as fill color, without a gradient. Useful when using offset or if your child has some transparency.	boolean	false, but true if offset is defined
sides	The sides that will have their shadows drawn. Doesn't include corners. Undefined sides fallbacks to true. Explanation.	Record<'start' | 'end' | 'top' | 'bottom', boolean>	undefined
corners	The corners that will have their shadows drawn. Undefined corners fallbacks to true. Explanation.	Record<'topStart' | 'topEnd' | 'bottomStart' | 'bottomEnd', boolean>	undefined
style	The style of the View that wraps your children. Read the Notes below.	StyleProp<ViewStyle>	undefined
containerStyle	The style of the View that wraps the Shadow and your children. Useful for margins.	StyleProp<ViewStyle>	undefined
stretch	Make your children ocuppy all available horizontal space. Explanation.	boolean	false
safeRender	Won't use the relative sizing and positioning on the 1st render but on the following renders with the exact onLayout sizes. Useful if dealing with radii greater than the sides sizes (like a circle) to avoid visual artifacts on the 1st render. If true, the Shadow won't appear on the 1st render.	boolean	false
disabled	Disables the Shadow. Useful for easily reusing components as sometimes shadows are not desired. containerStyle and style are still applied.	boolean	false

Notes

• If the Shadow has a single child, it will get the width, height and all of the borderRadius properties from the children's style property, if defined.

• You may also define those properties in the Shadow's style. The defined properties here will have priority over the ones defined in the child's style.

• If the width and height are defined in any of those, there will be only a single render, as the first automatic sizing won't happen, only the precise render.

• You can use either the 'borderTopLeftRadius' or 'borderTopStartRadius' and their variations to define the corners radii, although I recommend the latter as it's the RTL standard.

• Having a radius greater than its side will mess the shadow if the sizes aren't defined. You can use the safeRender property to only show the shadow on the 2nd render and beyond, when we have the exact component size and the radii are properly limited.

• Radii greater than 2000 (Tailwind's rounded-full is 9999) may crash Android.

⁉️ FAQ

• How to set the Shadow opacity?

  The opacity is set directly in the startColor and endColor properties, in the alpha channel. E.g.: '#0001' is an almost transparent black. You may also use '#rrggbbaa', 'rgba()', 'hsla()' etc. All patterns in this link, but not int colors, are accepted.

• My component is no longer using the available parent width after applying the Shadow! What to do?

  Use the stretch property or style={{alignSelf: 'stretch'}} in your Shadow component. Explanation!

• I want a preset for my Shadows!

  It's exported the ShadowProps type, the props of the Shadow component. You may do the following:

  const ShadowPresets = {
    button: {
      offset: [0, 1], distance: 1, startColor: '#0003',
    } as ShadowProps,
  };
  
  <Shadow {...ShadowPresets.button}>

• The offset and size properties are throwing Typescript errors!

  Upgrade your Typescript to at least 4.0.0! Those two properties use labeled tuples. If you don't use Typescript, this won't happen.

📰 Popularly seen on

• LogRocket - Applying box shadows in React Native

• V. Petrachin - Top 10 Libraries You Should Know for React Native in 2022