Text

A React component for displaying text.

Text supports nesting, styling, and touch handling.

In the following example, the nested title and body text will inherit the fontFamily from styles.baseText, but the title provides its own additional styles. The title and body will stack on top of each other on account of the literal newlines:

import React, {useState} from 'react';
import {Text, StyleSheet} from 'react-native';
import {SafeAreaView, SafeAreaProvider} from 'react-native-safe-area-context';

const TextInANest = () => {
  const [titleText, setTitleText] = useState("Bird's Nest");
  const bodyText = 'This is not really a bird nest.';

  const onPressTitle = () => {
    setTitleText("Bird's Nest [pressed]");
  };

  return (
    <SafeAreaProvider>
      <SafeAreaView style={styles.container}>
        <Text style={styles.baseText}>
          <Text style={styles.titleText} onPress={onPressTitle}>
            {titleText}
            {'\n'}
            {'\n'}
          </Text>
          <Text numberOfLines={5}>{bodyText}</Text>
        </Text>
      </SafeAreaView>
    </SafeAreaProvider>
  );
};

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
  },
  baseText: {
    fontFamily: 'Cochin',
  },
  titleText: {
    fontSize: 20,
    fontWeight: 'bold',
  },
});

export default TextInANest;

Nested text

Android, iOS and Vega allow you to display formatted text by annotating ranges of a string with specific formatting like bold or colored text (NSAttributedString on iOS, SpannableString on Android). In practice, this is very tedious. For React Native, we decided to use the web paradigm for this, where you can nest text to achieve the same effect.

import React from 'react';
import {Text, StyleSheet} from 'react-native';
import {SafeAreaView, SafeAreaProvider} from 'react-native-safe-area-context';

const BoldAndBeautiful = () => (
  <SafeAreaProvider>
    <SafeAreaView style={styles.container}>
      <Text style={styles.baseText}>
        I am bold
        <Text style={styles.innerText}> and red</Text>
      </Text>
    </SafeAreaView>
  </SafeAreaProvider>
);

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
  },
  baseText: {
    fontWeight: 'bold',
  },
  innerText: {
    color: 'red',
  },
});

export default BoldAndBeautiful;

Behind the scenes, React Native converts this to a flat NSAttributedString or SpannableString that contains the following information:

"I am bold and red"
0-9: bold
9-17: bold, red

Containers Vega Not Available

The <Text> element is unique relative to layout: everything inside is no longer using the Flexbox layout but using text layout. This means that elements inside of a <Text> are no longer rectangles, but wrap when they see the end of the line.

<Text>
  <Text>First part and </Text>
  <Text>second part</Text>
</Text>
// Text container: the text will be inline, if the space allows it
// |First part and second part|

// otherwise, the text will flow as if it was one
// |First part |
// |and second |
// |part       |

<View>
  <Text>First part and </Text>
  <Text>second part</Text>
</View>
// View container: each text is its own block
// |First part and|
// |second part   |

// otherwise, the text will flow in its own block
// |First part |
// |and        |
// |second part|

Limited Style Inheritance

On the web, the usual way to set a font family and size for the entire document is to take advantage of inherited CSS properties like so:

html {
  font-family:
    'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;
  font-size: 11px;
  color: #141823;
}

All elements in the document will inherit this font unless they or one of their parents specifies a new rule.

In React Native, we are more strict about it: you must wrap all the text nodes inside of a <Text> component. You cannot have a text node directly under a <View>.

// BAD: will raise exception, can't have a text node as child of a <View>
<View>
  Some text
</View>

// GOOD
<View>
  <Text>
    Some text
  </Text>
</View>

You also lose the ability to set up a default font for an entire subtree. Meanwhile, fontFamily only accepts a single font name, which is different from font-family in CSS. The recommended way to use consistent fonts and sizes across your application is to create a component MyAppText that includes them and use this component across your app. You can also use this component to make more specific components like MyAppHeaderText for other kinds of text.

<View>
  <MyAppText>
    Text styled with the default font for the entire application
  </MyAppText>
  <MyAppHeaderText>Text styled as a header</MyAppHeaderText>
</View>

Assuming that MyAppText is a component that only renders out its children into a Text component with styling, then MyAppHeaderText can be defined as follows:

const MyAppHeaderText = ({children}) => {
  return (
    <MyAppText>
      <Text style={{fontSize: 20}}>{children}</Text>
    </MyAppText>
  );
};

Composing MyAppText in this way ensures that we get the styles from a top-level component, but leaves us the ability to add/override them in specific use cases.

React Native still has the concept of style inheritance, but limited to text subtrees. In this case, the second part will be both bold and red.

<Text style={{fontWeight: 'bold'}}>
  I am bold
  <Text style={{color: 'red'}}>and red</Text>
</Text>

We believe that this more constrained way to style text will yield better apps:

• (Developer) React components are designed with strong isolation in mind: You should be able to drop a component anywhere in your application, trusting that as long as the props are the same, it will look and behave the same way. Text properties that could inherit from outside of the props would break this isolation.

• (Implementor) The implementation of React Native is also simplified. We do not need to have a fontFamily field on every single element, and we do not need to potentially traverse the tree up to the root every time we display a text node. The style inheritance is only encoded inside of the native Text component and doesn't leak to other components or the system itself.

Reference

Props

accessibilityHint

An accessibility hint helps users understand what will happen when they perform an action on the accessibility element when that result is not clear from the accessibility label.

accessibilityLanguage iOS

A value indicating which language should be used by the screen reader when the user interacts with the element. It should follow the BCP 47 specification.

See the iOS accessibilityLanguage doc for more information.

accessibilityLabel

Overrides the text that's read by the screen reader when the user interacts with the element. By default, the label is constructed by traversing all the children and accumulating all the Text nodes separated by space.

accessibilityLiveRegion Android Vega

Indicates to accessibility services whether the user should be notified when this view changes.

Works for Android API >= 19 only.

• 'none' - accessibility services should not announce changes to this view
• 'polite' - accessibility services should announce changes to this view
• 'assertive' - accessibility services should interrupt ongoing speech to immediately announce changes to this view

accessibilityRole

Tells the screen reader to treat the currently focused on element as having a specific role.

On iOS, these roles map to corresponding Accessibility Traits. Image button has the same functionality as if the trait was set to both 'image' and 'button'. See the Accessibility guide for more information.

On Android, these roles have similar functionality on TalkBack as adding Accessibility Traits does on Voiceover in iOS

accessibilityState

Tells the screen reader to treat the currently focused on element as being in a specific state.

You can provide one state, no state, or multiple states. The states must be passed in through an object, e.g. {selected: true, disabled: true}.

accessibilityActions

Accessibility actions allow an assistive technology to programmatically invoke the actions of a component. The accessibilityActions property should contain a list of action objects. Each action object should contain the field name and label.

See the Accessibility guide for more information.

onAccessibilityAction

Invoked when the user performs the accessibility actions. The only argument to this function is an event containing the name of the action to perform.

See the Accessibility guide for more information.

accessible

When set to true, indicates that the view is an accessibility element.

See the Accessibility guide for more information.

adjustsFontSizeToFit

Specifies whether fonts should be scaled down automatically to fit given style constraints.

allowFontScaling

Specifies whether fonts should scale to respect Text Size accessibility settings.

android_hyphenationFrequency Android Vega Not Available

Sets the frequency of automatic hyphenation to use when determining word breaks on Android API Level 23+.

aria-busy Vega Not Available

Indicates an element is being modified and that assistive technologies may want to wait until the changes are complete before informing the user about the update.

aria-checked Vega Not Available

Indicates the state of a checkable element. This field can either take a boolean or the "mixed" string to represent mixed checkboxes.

aria-disabled

Indicates that the element is perceivable but disabled, so it is not editable or otherwise operable.

aria-expanded

Indicates whether an expandable element is currently expanded or collapsed.

aria-label

Defines a string value that labels an interactive element.

aria-live Android Vega

Indicates that an element will be updated, and describes the types of updates the user agents, assistive technologies, and user can expect from the live region.

• off Accessibility services should not announce changes to this view.
• polite Accessibility services should announce changes to this view.
• assertive Accessibility services should interrupt ongoing speech to immediately announce changes to this view.

aria-selected

Indicates whether a selectable element is currently selected or not.

dataDetectorType Android

Determines the types of data converted to clickable URLs in the text element. By default, no data types are detected.

You can provide only one type.

disabled Android Vega

Specifies the disabled state of the text view for testing purposes.

dynamicTypeRamp iOS

The Dynamic Type ramp to apply to this element on iOS.

ellipsizeMode

When numberOfLines is set, this prop defines how the text will be truncated. numberOfLines must be set in conjunction with this prop.

This can be one of the following values:

• head - The line is displayed so that the end fits in the container and the missing text at the beginning of the line is indicated by an ellipsis glyph. e.g., "…wxyz"
• middle - The line is displayed so that the beginning and end fit in the container and the missing text in the middle is indicated by an ellipsis glyph. "ab…yz"
• tail - The line is displayed so that the beginning fits in the container and the missing text at the end of the line is indicated by an ellipsis glyph. e.g., "abcd…"
• clip - Lines are not drawn past the edge of the text container.

marquee is available only on kepler platform.

selected Vega

Specifies that the view is explicitly marked as chosen or active, regardless of user interaction or focus. When set to true, it may trigger associated styling or behavioral changes e.g. if ellipsizeMode is set to marquee, selected=true will start the marquee animation.

isHtml Vega

Used to specify if user is passing a markup string, only supported in kepler.

id

Used to locate this view from native code. Has precedence over nativeID prop.

maxFontSizeMultiplier

Specifies the largest possible scale a font can reach when allowFontScaling is enabled. Possible values:

• null/undefined: inherit from the parent node or the global default (0)
• 0: no max, ignore parent/global default
• >= 1: sets the maxFontSizeMultiplier of this node to this value

minimumFontScale iOS Vega

Specifies the smallest possible scale a font can reach when adjustsFontSizeToFit is enabled. (values 0.01-1.0).

nativeID

Used to locate this view from native code.

numberOfLines

Used to truncate the text with an ellipsis after computing the text layout, including line wrapping, such that the total number of lines does not exceed this number. Setting this property to 0 will result in unsetting this value, which means that no lines restriction will be applied.

This prop is commonly used with ellipsizeMode.

onLayout

Invoked on mount and on layout changes.

onLongPress Vega + TV Not Available

This function is called on long press.

onMoveShouldSetResponder Vega Not Available

Does this view want to "claim" touch responsiveness? This is called for every touch move on the View when it is not the responder.

onPress Vega + TV Not Available

Function called on user press, triggered after onPressOut.

onPressIn Vega + TV Not Available

Called immediately when a touch is engaged, before onPressOut and onPress.

onPressOut Vega + TV Not Available

Called when a touch is released.

onResponderGrant Vega Not Available

The View is now responding to touch events. This is the time to highlight and show the user what is happening.

On Android, return true from this callback to prevent any other native components from becoming responder until this responder terminates.

onResponderMove Vega Not Available

The user is moving their finger.

onResponderRelease Vega Not Available

Fired at the end of the touch.

onResponderTerminate Vega Not Available

The responder has been taken from the View. Might be taken by other views after a call to onResponderTerminationRequest, or might be taken by the OS without asking (e.g., happens with control center/ notification center on iOS)

onResponderTerminationRequest Vega Not Available

Some other View wants to become a responder and is asking this View to release its responder. Returning true allows its release.

onStartShouldSetResponderCapture Vega Not Available

If a parent View wants to prevent a child View from becoming a responder on a touch start, it should have this handler which returns true.

onTextLayout

Invoked on Text layout change.

pressRetentionOffset

Defines how far your touch may move off of the button, before deactivating the button. Once deactivated, try moving it back and you'll see that the button is once again reactivated! Ensure you pass in a constant to reduce memory allocations.

On TV devices using DPAD interaction, this prop is accepted without errors but has no observable effect since DPAD key events bypass touch geometry checks. On Multimodal devices with touch input, the prop correctly expands or contracts the press retention region around the text element.

ref

A ref setter that will be assigned an element node when mounted.

Note that Text components don't provide text nodes, the same way that paragraph elements (<p>) on Web are element nodes instead of text nodes. Text nodes can be found as their child nodes instead.

role

role communicates the purpose of a component to the user of an assistive technology. Has precedence over the accessibilityRole prop.

selectable

Lets the user select text, to use the native copy and paste functionality.

selectionColor Android Vega

The highlight color of the text.

style

suppressHighlighting iOS Vega Not Available

When true, no visual change is made when text is pressed down. By default, a gray oval highlights the text on press down.

testID

Used to locate this view in end-to-end tests.

textBreakStrategy Android

Set text break strategy on Android API Level 23+, possible values are simple, highQuality, balanced.

lineBreakStrategyIOS iOS Vega Not Available

Set line break strategy on iOS 14+. Possible values are none, standard, hangul-word and push-out.

alexaEntityType Vega

An alias for voiceEntityType. alexaEntityType represents the value for the type of object that needs to be considered by Alexa UIController Interface. This is an optional prop and specific to Alexa UIController Interface support, it maps to the entity.type field from the Alexa UIController Interface (Alexa UIController API doc)

alexaExternalIds Vega

An alias for voiceExternalIds. This is an optional prop and specific to Alexa UIController Interface support, it maps to the entity.ExternalIds field from the Alexa UIController Interface (Alexa UIController API doc)

entity.ExternalIds are the identifiers for this entity unique within the scope of this endpoint. The entity.externalIds field will be opaque to Alexa and will only be used to include in directives from Alexa. The identifiers reported in entity.externalIds are required to be understood by the endpoint on all directive commands that accept an entity structure.

ariaPosInSet Vega

The value for ariaPosInSet refers to the number of the element when the user can refer to the element by number, such as "Alexa, select number one."

This prop is required if the app wants to allow user to perform voice selection based on the number.

Please note that providing the prop with a value does not result in the value being rendered automatically from the component, for a consistent user behavior, app needs to render the same ordinal value for the item.

ariaLabel Vega

Deprecated. Use aria-label instead.

The value for ariaLabel refers to the name of the item, such as "Alexa, select Prime Video".

This prop is required if the app wants to allow user to perform voice selection based on the name.

Please note that providing the prop with a value does not result in the value being render as the title of the component, app needs to explicted render the same text value for the item.

altLabels Vega

An alias for voiceAlternativeNames. The value for altLabels refers to the list of alternate names for the item. (Renamed from keplerAltLabels)

This prop is required if the app wants to allow user to perform voice selection on the same item with different names.

keplerAltLabels Vega

Deprecated. Use altLabels instead.

The value for keplerAltLabels refers to the list of alternate names for the item. (Renamed from keplerAtlLabels)

This prop is required if the app wants to allow user to perform voice selection on the same item with different names.

Type Definitions

TextLayout

TextLayout object is a part of TextLayoutEvent callback and contains the measurement data for Text line.

Example

{
    capHeight: 10.496,
    ascender: 14.624,
    descender: 4,
    width: 28.224,
    height: 18.624,
    xHeight: 6.048,
    x: 0,
    y: 0
}

Properties

TextLayoutEvent

TextLayoutEvent object is returned in the callback as a result of a component layout change. It contains a key called lines with a value which is an array containing TextLayout object corresponded to every rendered text line.

Example

{
  lines: [
    TextLayout,
    TextLayout,
    // ...
  ];
  target: 1127;
}

Properties

Last updated: May 13, 2026