Static configuration

The bulk of the static configuration is done using the createXNavigator functions, e.g. createNativeStackNavigator, createBottomTabNavigator, createDrawerNavigator etc. We'll refer to these functions as createXNavigator in the rest of this guide.

createXNavigator

The createXNavigator functions take one argument, which is an object with the following properties:

• Same props as the navigator component, e.g. id, initialRouteName, screenOptions etc. See Navigator as well as the docs for each navigator for more details on the props they accept.
• screens - an object containing configuration for each screen in the navigator.
• groups - an optional object containing groups of screens (equivalent to Group in the dynamic API).

For example:

const RootStack = createNativeStackNavigator({
  initialRouteName: 'Home',
  screenOptions: {
    headerTintColor: 'white',
    headerStyle: {
      backgroundColor: 'tomato',
    },
  },
  screens: {
    Home: HomeScreen,
    Profile: ProfileScreen,
  },
});

screens

The screens object can contain key value pairs where the key is the name of the screen and the value can be several things:

• A component to render:

  const RootStack = createNativeStackNavigator({
    screens: {
      Home: HomeScreen,
    },
  });

• A navigator configured using createXNavigator for nested navigators:

  const HomeTabs = createBottomTabNavigator({
    screens: {
      Groups: GroupsScreen,
      Chats: ChatsScreen,
    },
  });
  
  const RootStack = createNativeStackNavigator({
    screens: {
      Home: HomeTabs,
    },
  });

• An object containing configuration for the screen. This configuration contains the various properties:

  const RootStack = createNativeStackNavigator({
    screens: {
      Home: {
        screen: HomeScreen,
        linking: {
          path: 'home',
        },
      },
    },
  });

  See Screen configuration for more details.

groups

The groups object can contain key-value pairs where the key is the name of the group and the value is the group configuration.

The configuration object for a screen accepts the properties described in the Group page. In addition, the following properties are available when using static configuration:

• if - this can be used to conditionally render the group and works the same as the if property in the screen configuration.
• screens - an object containing configuration for each screen in the group. The configuration is the same as the screens object in the navigator configuration.

Example:

const RootStack = createNativeStackNavigator({
  screens: {
    Home: HomeScreen,
    Profile: ProfileScreen,
  },
  groups: {
    Guest: {
      if: useIsGuest,
      screenOptions: {
        headerShown: false,
      },
      screens: {
        // ...
      },
    },
    User: {
      if: useIsUser,
      screens: {
        // ...
      },
    },
  },
});

Screen configuration

The configuration object for a screen accepts the properties described in the Screen page. In addition, the following properties are available when using static configuration:

linking

Linking configuration for the screen. It can be either a string for a path or an object with the linking configuration:

const RootStack = createNativeStackNavigator({
  screens: {
    Profile: {
      screen: ProfileScreen,
      linking: {
        path: 'u/:userId',
        parse: {
          userId: (id) => id.replace(/^@/, ''),
        },
        stringify: {
          userId: (id) => `@${id}`,
        },
      },
    },
    Chat: {
      screen: ChatScreen,
      linking: 'chat/:chatId',
    },
  },
});

The linking object supports the same configuration options described in Configuring links such as parse, stringify and exact.

To make deep links work on native apps, you also need to configure your app and pass prefixes to the navigation component returned by createStaticNavigation:

const Navigation = createStaticNavigation(RootStack);

const linking = {
  prefixes: ['https://example.com', 'example://'],
};

function App() {
  return <Navigation linking={linking} />;
}

if

Callback to determine whether the screen should be rendered or not. It doesn't receive any arguments. This can be useful for conditional rendering of screens, e.g. - if you want to render a different screen for logged in users.

You can use a custom hook to use custom logic to determine the return value:

const useIsLoggedIn = () => {
  const { isLoggedIn } = React.useContext(AuthContext);

  return isLoggedIn;
};

const RootStack = createNativeStackNavigator({
  screens: {
    Home: {
      screen: HomeScreen,
      if: useIsLoggedIn,
    },
  },
});

The above example will only render the HomeScreen if the user is logged in.

For more details, see Authentication flow.

createStaticNavigation

The createStaticNavigation function takes the static config returned by createXNavigator functions and returns a React component to render:

const Navigation = createStaticNavigation(RootStack);

function App() {
  return <Navigation />;
}

This component is a wrapper around the NavigationContainer component and accepts the same props and ref as the NavigationContainer component. It is intended to be rendered once at the root of your app similar to how you'd use NavigationContainer component.

Differences in the linking prop

Similar to NavigationContainer, the component returned by createStaticNavigation also accepts a linking prop. However, there are some key differences:

1. It's not possible to pass a full config object to the linking prop. It can only accept path and an initialRouteName for the root navigator.

2. The linking config is collected from the linking properties specified in the screen configuration.

3. It's possible to pass enabled: 'auto' to automatically generate paths for all leaf screens:

   const Navigation = createStaticNavigation(RootStack);
   
   const linking = {
     enabled: 'auto',
     prefixes: ['https://example.com', 'example://'],
   };
   
   function App() {
     return <Navigation linking={linking} />;
   }

   See How does automatic path generation work for more details.

createComponentForStaticNavigation

The createComponentForStaticNavigation function takes the static config returned by createXNavigator functions and returns a React component to render. The second argument is a name for the component that'd be used in React DevTools:

const RootStackNavigator = createComponentForStaticNavigation(
  RootStack,
  'RootNavigator'
);

The returned component doesn't take any props. All of the configuration is inferred from the static config. It's essentially the same as defining a component using the dynamic API.

This looks similar to createStaticNavigation however they are very different. When using static configuration, you'd never use this function directly. The only time you'd use this is if you're migrating away from static configuration and want to reuse existing code you wrote instead of rewriting it to the dynamic API. See Combining static and dynamic APIs for more details.

createPathConfigForStaticNavigation

The createPathConfigForStaticNavigation function takes the static config returned by createXNavigator functions and returns a path config object that can be used within the linking config.

const config = {
  screens: {
    Home: {
      screens: createPathConfigForStaticNavigation(HomeTabs),
    },
  },
};

Similar to createComponentForStaticNavigation, this is intended to be used when migrating away from static configuration. See Combining static and dynamic APIs for more details.