Type checking with TypeScript

React Navigation can be configured to type-check screens and their params, as well as various other APIs using TypeScript. This provides better intelliSense and type safety when working with React Navigation.

Static

There are 2 steps to configure TypeScript with the static API:

1. Each screen component needs to specify the type of the route.params prop that it accepts. The StaticScreenProps type makes it simpler:

import type { StaticScreenProps } from '@react-navigation/native';

type Props = StaticScreenProps<{
  username: string;
}>;

function ProfileScreen({ route }: Props) {
  // ...
}

1. Generate the ParamList type for the root navigator and specify it as the default type for the RootParamList type:

import type { StaticParamList } from '@react-navigation/native';

const HomeTabs = createBottomTabNavigator({
  screens: {
    Feed: FeedScreen,
    Profile: ProfileScreen,
  },
});

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

type RootStackParamList = StaticParamList<typeof RootStack>;

declare global {
  namespace ReactNavigation {
    interface RootParamList extends RootStackParamList {}
  }
}

This is needed to type-check the useNavigation hook.

Navigator specific types

Generally we recommend using the default types for the useNavigation prop to access the navigation object in a navigator agnostic manner. However, if you need to use navigator specific APIs, you need to manually annotate useNavigation:

type BottomTabParamList = StaticParamList<typeof BottomTabNavigator>;
type ProfileScreenNavigationProp = BottomTabNavigationProp<
  BottomTabParamList,
  'Profile'
>;

// ...

const navigation = useNavigation<ProfileScreenNavigationProp>();

This follows the same principle as the types described in Type checking with TypeScript.

Note that annotating useNavigation this way not type-safe since we can't guarantee that the type you provided matches the type of the navigator.

Nesting navigator using dynamic API

Consider the following example:

const Tab = createBottomTabNavigator();

function HomeTabs() {
  return (
    <Tab.Navigator>
      <Tab.Screen name="Feed" component={FeedScreen} />
      <Tab.Screen name="Profile" component={ProfileScreen} />
    </Tab.Navigator>
  );
}

const RootStack = createStackNavigator({
  Home: HomeTabs,
});

Here, the HomeTabs component is defined using the dynamic API. This means that when we create the param list for the root navigator with StaticParamList<typeof RootStack>, it won't know about the screens defined in the nested navigator. To fix this, we'd need to specify the param list for the nested navigator explicitly.

This can be done by using the type of the route prop that the screen component receives:

type HomeTabsParamList = {
  Feed: undefined;
  Profile: undefined;
};

type HomeTabsProps = StaticScreenProps<
  NavigatorScreenParams<HomeTabsParamList>
>;

function HomeTabs(_: HomeTabsProps) {
  return (
    <Tab.Navigator>
      <Tab.Screen name="Feed" component={FeedScreen} />
      <Tab.Screen name="Profile" component={ProfileScreen} />
    </Tab.Navigator>
  );
}

Now, when using StaticParamList<typeof RootStack>, it will include the screens defined in the nested navigator.

Dynamic

When using the dynamic API, it is necessary to specify the types for each screen as well as the nesting structure as it cannot be inferred from the code.

Type checking the navigator

To type check our route name and params, the first thing we need to do is to create an object type with mappings for route name to the params of the route. For example, say we have a route called Profile in our root navigator which should have a param userId:

type RootStackParamList = {
  Profile: { userId: string };
};

Similarly, we need to do the same for each route:

type RootStackParamList = {
  Home: undefined;
  Profile: { userId: string };
  Feed: { sort: 'latest' | 'top' } | undefined;
};

Specifying undefined means that the route doesn't have params. A union type with undefined (e.g. SomeType | undefined) means that params are optional.

After we have defined the mappings, we need to tell our navigator to use it. To do that, we can pass it as a generic to the createXNavigator functions:

import { createStackNavigator } from '@react-navigation/stack';

const RootStack = createStackNavigator<RootStackParamList>();

And then we can use it:

<RootStack.Navigator initialRouteName="Home">
  <RootStack.Screen name="Home" component={Home} />
  <RootStack.Screen
    name="Profile"
    component={Profile}
    initialParams={{ userId: user.id }}
  />
  <RootStack.Screen name="Feed" component={Feed} />
</RootStack.Navigator>

This will provide type checking and intelliSense for props of the Navigator and Screen components.

note

The type containing the mappings must be a type alias (e.g. type RootStackParamList = { ... }). It cannot be an interface (e.g. interface RootStackParamList { ... }). It also shouldn't extend ParamListBase (e.g. interface RootStackParamList extends ParamListBase { ... }). Doing so will result in incorrect type checking where it allows you to pass incorrect route names.

Type checking screens

To type check our screens, we need to annotate the navigation and the route props received by a screen. The navigator packages in React Navigation export generic types to define types for both the navigation and route props from the corresponding navigator.

For example, you can use NativeStackScreenProps for the Native Stack Navigator.

import type { NativeStackScreenProps } from '@react-navigation/native-stack';

type RootStackParamList = {
  Home: undefined;
  Profile: { userId: string };
  Feed: { sort: 'latest' | 'top' } | undefined;
};

type Props = NativeStackScreenProps<RootStackParamList, 'Profile'>;

The type takes 3 generics:

• The param list object we defined earlier
• The name of the route the screen belongs to
• The ID of the navigator (optional)

If you have an id prop for your navigator, you can do:

type Props = NativeStackScreenProps<RootStackParamList, 'Profile', 'MyStack'>;

This allows us to type check route names and params which you're navigating using navigate, push etc. The name of the current route is necessary to type check the params in route.params and when you call setParams.

Similarly, you can import StackScreenProps for @react-navigation/stack, DrawerScreenProps from @react-navigation/drawer, BottomTabScreenProps from @react-navigation/bottom-tabs and so on.

Then you can use the Props type you defined above to annotate your component.

For function components:

function ProfileScreen({ route, navigation }: Props) {
  // ...
}

For class components:

class ProfileScreen extends React.Component<Props> {
  render() {
    // ...
  }
}

You can get the types for navigation and route from the Props type as follows:

type ProfileScreenNavigationProp = Props['navigation'];

type ProfileScreenRouteProp = Props['route'];

Alternatively, you can also annotate the navigation and route objects separately.

To get the type for the navigation prop, we need to import the corresponding type from the navigator. For example, NativeStackNavigationProp for @react-navigation/native-stack:

import type { NativeStackNavigationProp } from '@react-navigation/native-stack';

type ProfileScreenNavigationProp = NativeStackNavigationProp<
  RootStackParamList,
  'Profile'
>;

Similarly, you can import StackNavigationProp from @react-navigation/stack, DrawerNavigationProp from @react-navigation/drawer, BottomTabNavigationProp from @react-navigation/bottom-tabs etc.

To get the type for the route object, we need to use the RouteProp type from @react-navigation/native:

import type { RouteProp } from '@react-navigation/native';

type ProfileScreenRouteProp = RouteProp<RootStackParamList, 'Profile'>;

We recommend creating a separate types.tsx file where you keep the types and import them in your component files instead of repeating them in each file.

Nesting navigators

Type checking screens and params in nested navigator

You can navigate to a screen in a nested navigator by passing screen and params properties for the nested screen:

navigation.navigate('Home', {
  screen: 'Feed',
  params: { sort: 'latest' },
});

To be able to type check this, we need to extract the params from the screen containing the nested navigator. This can be done using the NavigatorScreenParams utility:

import { NavigatorScreenParams } from '@react-navigation/native';

type TabParamList = {
  Home: NavigatorScreenParams<StackParamList>;
  Profile: { userId: string };
};

Combining navigation props

When you nest navigators, the navigation prop of the screen is a combination of multiple navigation props. For example, if we have a tab inside a stack, the navigation prop will have both jumpTo (from the tab navigator) and push (from the stack navigator). To make it easier to combine types from multiple navigators, you can use the CompositeScreenProps type:

import type { CompositeScreenProps } from '@react-navigation/native';
import type { BottomTabScreenProps } from '@react-navigation/bottom-tabs';
import type { StackScreenProps } from '@react-navigation/stack';

type ProfileScreenProps = CompositeScreenProps<
  BottomTabScreenProps<TabParamList, 'Profile'>,
  StackScreenProps<StackParamList>
>;

The CompositeScreenProps type takes 2 parameters, first parameter is the type of props for the primary navigation (type for the navigator that owns this screen, in our case the tab navigator which contains the Profile screen) and second parameter is the type of props for secondary navigation (type for a parent navigator). The primary type should always have the screen's route name as its second parameter.

For multiple parent navigators, this secondary type should be nested:

type ProfileScreenProps = CompositeScreenProps<
  BottomTabScreenProps<TabParamList, 'Profile'>,
  CompositeScreenProps<
    StackScreenProps<StackParamList>,
    DrawerScreenProps<DrawerParamList>
  >
>;

If annotating the navigation prop separately, you can use CompositeNavigationProp instead. The usage is similar to CompositeScreenProps:

import type { CompositeNavigationProp } from '@react-navigation/native';
import type { BottomTabNavigationProp } from '@react-navigation/bottom-tabs';
import type { StackNavigationProp } from '@react-navigation/stack';

type ProfileScreenNavigationProp = CompositeNavigationProp<
  BottomTabNavigationProp<TabParamList, 'Profile'>,
  StackNavigationProp<StackParamList>
>;

Annotating useNavigation

danger

Annotating useNavigation isn't type-safe because the type parameter cannot be statically verified. Prefer specifying a default type instead.

To annotate the navigation object that we get from useNavigation, we can use a type parameter:

const navigation = useNavigation<ProfileScreenNavigationProp>();

Annotating useRoute

danger

Annotating useRoute isn't type-safe because the type parameter cannot be statically verified. Prefer using the route object from the screen component's props instead when possible. Use useRoute for generic code that doesn't need specific route type.

To annotate the route object that we get from useRoute, we can use a type parameter:

const route = useRoute<ProfileScreenRouteProp>();

Annotating options and screenOptions

When you pass the options to a Screen or screenOptions prop to a Navigator component, they are already type-checked and you don't need to do anything special. However, sometimes you might want to extract the options to a separate object, and you might want to annotate it.

To annotate the options, we need to import the corresponding type from the navigator. For example, StackNavigationOptions for @react-navigation/stack:

import type { StackNavigationOptions } from '@react-navigation/stack';

const options: StackNavigationOptions = {
  headerShown: false,
};

Similarly, you can import DrawerNavigationOptions from @react-navigation/drawer, BottomTabNavigationOptions from @react-navigation/bottom-tabs etc.

When using the function form of options and screenOptions, you can annotate the arguments with a type exported from the navigator, e.g. StackOptionsArgs for @react-navigation/stack, DrawerOptionsArgs for @react-navigation/drawer, BottomTabOptionsArgs for @react-navigation/bottom-tabs etc.:

import type {
  StackNavigationOptions,
  StackOptionsArgs,
} from '@react-navigation/stack';

const options = ({ route }: StackOptionsArgs): StackNavigationOptions => {
  return {
    headerTitle: route.name,
  };
};

Annotating ref on NavigationContainer

If you use the createNavigationContainerRef() method to create the ref, you can annotate it to type-check navigation actions:

import { createNavigationContainerRef } from '@react-navigation/native';

// ...

const navigationRef = createNavigationContainerRef<RootStackParamList>();

Similarly, for useNavigationContainerRef():

import { useNavigationContainerRef } from '@react-navigation/native';

// ...

const navigationRef = useNavigationContainerRef<RootStackParamList>();

If you're using a regular ref object, you can pass a generic to the NavigationContainerRef type..

Example when using React.useRef hook:

import type { NavigationContainerRef } from '@react-navigation/native';

// ...

const navigationRef =
  React.useRef<NavigationContainerRef<RootStackParamList>>(null);

Example when using React.createRef:

import type { NavigationContainerRef } from '@react-navigation/native';

// ...

const navigationRef =
  React.createRef<NavigationContainerRef<RootStackParamList>>();

Specifying default types for useNavigation, Link, ref etc

Instead of manually annotating these APIs, you can specify a global type for your root navigator which will be used as the default type.

To do this, you can add this snippet somewhere in your codebase:

declare global {
  namespace ReactNavigation {
    interface RootParamList extends RootStackParamList {}
  }
}

The RootParamList interface lets React Navigation know about the params accepted by your root navigator. Here we extend the type RootStackParamList because that's the type of params for our stack navigator at the root. The name of this type isn't important.

Specifying this type is important if you heavily use useNavigation, Link etc. in your app since it'll ensure type-safety. It will also make sure that you have correct nesting on the linking prop.

Organizing types

When writing types for React Navigation, there are a couple of things we recommend to keep things organized.

1. It's good to create a separate files (e.g. navigation/types.tsx) which contains the types related to React Navigation.
2. Instead of using CompositeNavigationProp directly in your components, it's better to create a helper type that you can reuse.
3. Specifying a global type for your root navigator would avoid manual annotations in many places.

Considering these recommendations, the file containing the types may look something like this:

import type {
  CompositeScreenProps,
  NavigatorScreenParams,
} from '@react-navigation/native';
import type { StackScreenProps } from '@react-navigation/stack';
import type { BottomTabScreenProps } from '@react-navigation/bottom-tabs';

export type RootStackParamList = {
  Home: NavigatorScreenParams<HomeTabParamList>;
  PostDetails: { id: string };
  NotFound: undefined;
};

export type RootStackScreenProps<T extends keyof RootStackParamList> =
  StackScreenProps<RootStackParamList, T>;

export type HomeTabParamList = {
  Popular: undefined;
  Latest: undefined;
};

export type HomeTabScreenProps<T extends keyof HomeTabParamList> =
  CompositeScreenProps<
    BottomTabScreenProps<HomeTabParamList, T>,
    RootStackScreenProps<keyof RootStackParamList>
  >;

declare global {
  namespace ReactNavigation {
    interface RootParamList extends RootStackParamList {}
  }
}

Now, when annotating your components, you can write:

import type { HomeTabScreenProps } from './navigation/types';

function PopularScreen({ navigation, route }: HomeTabScreenProps<'Popular'>) {
  // ...
}

If you're using hooks such as useRoute, you can write:

import type { HomeTabScreenProps } from './navigation/types';

function PopularScreen() {
  const route = useRoute<HomeTabScreenProps<'Popular'>['route']>();

  // ...
}