useAppTheme

The useAppTheme() hook returns various properties and tools relating to theming your app.

Generally, you'll only need a few properties from this hook, with the most important being theme and themed.

Example usage:

import { View, type ViewStyle } from "react-native"
import { useAppTheme } from "@/utils/useAppTheme"

const MyComponent = () => {
  const {
    // Any styles you create with the type ThemedStyle<T> must be wrapped with
    // themed($styleName) before passing it along to the component's style property.
    themed,
    // This is the current theme object.
    theme,
    // themeContext is what theme you are actually using: "light" | "dark"
    themeContext,
  } = useAppTheme()

  return (
    <View style={themed($container)}>
      <View style={$plainObjectStyle}>
        {/* An Example of direct theme color usage in a component: */}
        <View
          style={{
            backgroundColor: theme.colors.error,
          }}
        >
          {/* This will output "light" or "dark" */}
          <Text>{themeContext}</Text>
        </View>
      </View>
    </View>
  )
}

// This is an ignite ThemedStyle. It's just like a ViewStyle but
// is wrapped with a function that will be called with a theme parameter.
const $container: ThemedStyle<ViewStyle> = (theme) => ({
  // You can access theme named colors:
  backgroundColor: theme.colors.background,
  // Accessing the color palette is not generally recommended.
  color: theme.colors.palette.angry500,
  // Spacing can be changed on a per-theme basis as well.
  paddingHorizontal: theme.spacing.small,
})

// We haven't abandoned plain style objects as the preferred way
// to style your components, but it can't use dynamic themes.
const $plainObjectStyle: ViewStyle = {
  marginBottom: 20,
}

Properties:

navTheme

A react-navigation theme object. This is the same object you would pass to a NavigationContainer component.

setThemeContextOverride

A function that allows you to override the theme context. This is useful for allowing users to switch between light and dark mode.

The default behavior is to use the system theme, but you can override this by calling setThemeContextOverride("light" | "dark").

Calling setThemeContextOverride(undefined) will reset the theme to the user's system preference.

theme

A Theme object that contains all the colors, spacing, and other theme-related properties of the current theme context. You can edit these values in the app/theme folder.

themeContext

A string that represents the current theme context. This will almost always be either "light" or "dark".

info

When resetting the theme context to the system preference with setThemeContextOverride(undefined), the themeContext will not be undefined. It will be the return value of react-native's useColorScheme() hook.

themed

themed() is a simple function with complex types. You can pass a plain style object to it, a ThemedStyle function, or an array of either.

note

When passing an array of styles or ThemedStyle functions to themed(), it will return a single style object with last properties overriding any properties previously set.

In the example below, the last <View> would be yellow even though $themedStyle specifies red because the background color property was modified by a later style in the array.

const $plainStyle: ViewStyle = {
  padding: 10,
  backgroundColor: "black",
  width: 25,
  height: 25,
}

const $themedStyle: ThemedStyle<ViewStyle> = (theme) => ({
  backgroundColor: theme.colors.errorBackground,
  height: theme.spacing.xl,
  width: theme.spacing.xl
})

<View style={$plainStyle} />
// <View style={$themedStyle} /> // This won't work
<View style={themed($themedStyle)} />
// <View style={themed($plainStyle)} /> // You can, but why would you?
<View style={themed([$themedStyle, $plainStyle])} />
<View style={themed([
  $themedStyle,
  $plainStyle,
  // A plain style object
  { width: 7, backgroundColor: 'yellow'}
])} />

Make sure you don't pass any Animated styles to themed(). It will not work as expected! Keep them in separate style array objects: <Animated.View style={[$animatedStyle, themed($myThemedStyle)]}>.