detectsoftnav

Android 4.0 (API level 14) introduced the ability to hide/show the soft navigation bar. This fact is not accounted for by React Native, which will happily continue to show portions of Views underneath it when it is shown.

This package allows you to add listeners for the soft navigation bar being hidden and shown and modify your View layout accordingly. It also allows you to check the current status of the soft navigation bar at any given time.

Installation

Download via NPM

npm i -D rn-detect-soft-nav

Link, either via react-native link or manually

react-native link rn-detect-soft-nav

-- OR --

// android/settings.gradle
// add the following at the end of the file
include ':rn-detect-soft-nav'
project(':rn-detect-soft-nav').projectDir =
  new File(rootProject.projectDir, '../node_modules/rn-detect-soft-nav/android')

// android/app/build.gradle
dependencies {
  ...
  compile project(':rn-detect-soft-nav') // <-- add this
}

// android/app/src/main/java/.../MainApplication.java
import pro.aaronross.util.DetectSoftNav; // <-- add this
...
@Override
protected List<ReactPackage> getPackages() {
  return Arrays.<~>asList(
    ...,
    new DetectSoftNavPackage()  // <-- and this
  );
}

Hide/Show Listeners

import DetectSoftNav from 'rn-detect-soft-nav'
...
DetectSoftNav.addListeners({
  onShown: () => {
    // navbar is locked to bottom of screen, add
    // extra padding to prevent occlusion
  },
  onHidden: () => {
    // navbar is hidden, remove extra padding
  }
})

Get Current Visibility

import DetectSoftNav from 'rn-detect-soft-nav'
...
DetectSoftNav.isVisible().then(v => { /* do stuff with v */ })

You can also use async/await, if you would prefer.

import DetectSoftNav from 'rn-detect-soft-nav'
...
foo = async () => {
  const v = await DetectSoftNav.isVisible()
  // do stuff with v
}

Recommended Use

For best performance/ease of use, I recommend implementing a View similar to RN's built-in SafeAreaView with flexible footer padding to account for hiding/showing the soft navbar, then replacing the base View for any screens that care about navbar visiblity with that enhanced View.