react-native-gifted-chat
A fully customizable chat UI component for React Native and web applications with extensive features.
What is react-native-gifted-chat?
React Native Gifted Chat is a comprehensive chat user interface library for React Native and react-native-web applications. It provides a production-ready, feature-rich chat component that can be easily integrated into mobile and web apps, saving significant development time. The library offers extensive customization while providing sensible defaults for rapid implementation of sophisticated chat interfaces.
React Native and react-native-web developers building chat features into mobile or web applications, particularly those using Expo or requiring cross-platform compatibility. It is suitable for projects needing a customizable, production-ready chat UI without building from scratch.
Developers choose React Native Gifted Chat because it is the most complete chat UI for React Native, offering a wide array of built-in features like swipe-to-reply, rich media support, and smart link parsing out of the box. Its deep customization capabilities and cross-platform support (iOS, Android, web via react-native-web) with full Expo compatibility provide flexibility and reduce development overhead compared to alternatives.
Overview
💬 The most complete chat UI for React Native
Use Cases
Best For
- Building cross-platform chat applications for iOS, Android, and web using React Native and react-native-web.
- Integrating a production-ready, customizable chat UI into Expo projects with minimal setup.
- Implementing advanced chat features like swipe-to-reply, typing indicators, message status (sent/delivered/read), and quick replies without custom development.
- Creating chat interfaces that require rich media support for images, videos, audio, files, and custom attachments.
- Developing localized chat applications with full i18n support via Day.js and proper accessibility handling.
- Building AI chatbot interfaces where maintaining scroll position during long responses is important, using the maintainVisibleContentPosition prop.
Not Ideal For
- Projects built with non-React Native frameworks such as Flutter or native iOS/Android SDKs.
- Applications needing a lightweight, dependency-free chat component without advanced features like swipe-to-reply or typing indicators.
- Teams looking for an all-in-one chat solution with integrated backend services and real-time messaging infrastructure.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Includes swipe-to-reply, typing indicators, message status, quick replies, and rich media support out of the box, as listed in the README's detailed feature breakdown.
Allows overriding any component via props like renderBubble and renderMessage, enabling full design control while maintaining sensible defaults, as emphasized in the philosophy.
Works seamlessly on iOS, Android, and web via react-native-web, with full support for Expo projects, as highlighted in the platform notes and installation steps.
Comes with complete TypeScript definitions and full i18n integration using Day.js, ensuring type safety and internationalization ease, as noted in the features and props.
Cons
Requires multiple libraries including react-native-reanimated and react-native-gesture-handler, increasing installation complexity and bundle size, as seen in the installation section.
Setting up proper keyboard avoidance, especially with navigation headers, requires careful calculation of keyboardVerticalOffset, which is error-prone and detailed in the props reference.
Purely a frontend UI component; developers must implement their own message sending, receiving, and state management logic, unlike all-in-one solutions like Stream Chat.
Frequently Asked Questions
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