React Native has always been a fond choice for the majority of the developers for front-end web development. React Native offers many options in terms of tools, features, and plugins to customize small scale or large scale web applications according to the desired requirement.
On comparing React Native with Flutter, the latter takes the lead in terms of application performance and speed. However, React Native still offers copious options to build interactive UIs.
React Native provides some useful UI components and frameworks that help build interactive and visually attractive applications by default. However, external and third-party UI libraries and frameworks are better with their own set of features. Such UI development frameworks help save development time.
This article will find the list of top 10 UI development frameworks that will encourage you to build creative and innovative React Native applications.
React Native Elements
React Native elements is a cross-platform React native UI toolkit that provides consistent design features across the web, Android, and iOS. It is a UI kit that is entirely built with JavaScript and community-driven.
It supports Expo too. Unlike other UI components, React Native elements also help the application initiation take place faster and easier.
Key features:
- Provides core native UI features
- Removes the hassle of assembling different UI features
- Provide consistent UI APIs as a ready-made kit
Lottie Wrapper
Lottie is considered one of the few UI tool kits that provides futuristic interactive designing possibilities for React Native applications. They provide ready-made animations that can be quickly tested, customized in just a few clicks. The best part of Lottie is that you can try animations without writing even a single line of code.
Key features:
- Ability to render animations directly from After Effects
- Easily tweak the size, texts, and layers of each UI element.
- Lottie animations are compatible across any website within a few seconds of implementation.
Shoutem
Shoutem is an open-sourced UI tool kit that provides design components with a predefined style that can be quickly composed within a React Native application. This UI kit provides multiple possibilities by conveniently providing features for building UI focused gallery, videos, and event sections. Offers native performance with pixel-perfect UI layouts and themes.
Key features:
- Provides the opportunity to create frictionless UI quality
- Accessibility o large extension of the UI library
- Easily create parallax UI effects and transitions.
React Native Vector Icons
React Native vector icons are a prevalent UI component used to create visually improved buttons, navigation bars, tabs, and logos. This vector-based UI kit is easily customizable and extendable. It also increased the chances of being integrated with native sections or third-party plugins of a React Native application. Simple installation and simple implementation.
Key features:
- Reduces the loading time of icons
- Faster response time of the animation clipboard
- Supports Redux to improve user experience
Nachos UI kit
For creating plug-n-play mode kind of UI animations, Nachos UI kit is one of the best choices. UI components provided by the Nachos UI kit are coded using Avocode. Avocado is a fully-featured platform, and hence the creation of UI with this kit can be quickly built with simple sketch designs, including availing some support from using Photoshop.
Key features:
- Provides 30+ pre-coded UI components
- Easy NPM installation of the UI kit
- Offers specialized typography, spinner and slider elements
React Native UI kitten
React Native UI kitten may not be as popular as other UI kits used to build React Native apps, but it has been in existence for a longer time. The community that drives this UI kit is advanced, and if you have to choose a UI kit for your matured project, UI kitten might be a trustworthy choice. This kit also serves as a starter kit.
Key features:
- Provides a multi-theming system that unlocks the real power of UI
- Drives UI diversity without having to change the source code
- Follows Eva design system with atomic components
NativeBase KitchenSink
Developing UI themes for a React Native application with just a simple copy and paste configuration is possible with NativeBase KitchenSink. It offers a simple method of UI component creation, each with a composition of its own. However, this kit’s UI components are partially in sync with React Native native components, so even React Native components docs can be used for reference to build native themes.
Key features:
- Easy to develop
- Supports Expo
- Uses approaches to React to Native Router Flux (RNRF) and Create React Native App (CRNA)
Snowflake
Snowflake is specifically a UI kit. Instead, it is a mobile starter kit that provides different UI tools, libraries, and components for building React Native apps. Snowflake can also function as a boilerplate for iOS and Android with just one single code base. This kit functions explicitly based on either the Hapi or the Parse Server. Hence, UI elements create with this UI framework is built with robust backend connectivity.
Key features:
- UI components can be easily cloned.
- Themes created by default comes with a backend connected functionality.
- RNRF handles UI navigation in Snowflake
React Native Material Kit
Creating materialistic design painlessly and quickly is one of the benefits of choosing React Native Material Kit. This kit was built to introduce Material Design created by Google that can function with React Native. UI designs that are bold, graphic, and intentional are some of the characteristics of this kit.
Key features:
- UI design can be created with elements of motion graphics.
- Focuses on design continuity throughout the application
- Recognizes application environment and helps building coherent transitions
React Native Maps
React Native Maps focuses specifically on the UI creation for map features. This kit offers multiple map components with appropriate map markers, and tools are easily understandable upon implementation. Even children and kids can easily use the map section of your React Native application.
Key features:
- The Animated API of this kit can be integrated with Google Maps as well.
- Quickly render default map markers with animated UI props.
- Conveniently assign map trackers with attractive animation by writing a simple code.
Conclusion:
You can consider the following few factors to help you choose the best framework for your project:
- Price
- Popularity
- Community support
- Performance
- Design response time
- Documentation
All the above are just selected top ten UI kits from the pool of kits available for building React Native apps. There are more, each with its own set of solutions and features. Each UI kit has its limitation as well. Make sure to understand them before choosing one.