Future of built-in UI components

[sidorchukandrew]

As part of the lean-core initiative, many UI components left RN core and live in their own packages (like date/time picker, slider, progress bars). React Native ships with some core UI components like switches and alerts. On Android, these core components use old styling, whereas the Material 3 design system and components have been out for quite some time now.

I don't think think the solution is to update all the core RN components to use Material 3 (it'd be awesome if we could!). But what is the future we want for Android and Material 3? Should all the RN UI components be split off into separate packages that can use M3 styling? Should there be 1 package that has all the components? Should we keep the disjointed "some components have dedicated packages while others are in RN core"?

The React Native future I live in is one that pushes forward the things that Android and iOS push forward. iOS 26 forces all our hands to adopt the new updates to the design system. Google strongly recommends we use Material 3.

I've started implementing Material 3 components myself under rn-nui, but I'd love to dedicate effort in the right direction.

Learn more about Material 3: https://m3.material.io/

[sidorchukandrew]

I'd like to also mention, Expo UI is taking the approach of 1 package that has all the components, and uses Material 3, so that's certainly a win for the community!

[cortinico]

You're right in saying that the lean core effort moved several components outside of core.
We're still looking into reducing the API surface of React Native to make it only a core package with components exposed as separate package. That's a lengthy process because some components are tightly couple with the rendered and would need some refactoring.

I don't think think the solution is to update all the core RN components to use Material 3 (it'd be awesome if we could!). But what is the future we want for Android and Material 3?

Correct, we won't be updating the core components to support Material 3. Instead we rely on 3p libraries to offer this support, like Expo UI or react-native-paper

Should all the RN UI components be split off into separate packages that can use M3 styling? Should there be 1 package that has all the components? Should we keep the disjointed "some components have dedicated packages while others are in RN core"?

As mentioned, ideally each component that is now in core will live in a separate @react-native/<component> package. 3p libraries can extend or get inspiration from those components and offer M3-compatible components

[dannyhw]

For me a big thing would be getting auto-linking on nested dependencies so that not everything a library depends on for native code needs to be a peer dependency. Is that something we’ll see as part of the default react native auto-linking? Or will it only work with expo cli?