Enabling Fabric on iOS

caution

This documentation is still experimental and details are subject to changes as we iterate. Feel free to share your feedback on the react-native-website PR for this page.

Moreover, it contains several manual steps. Please note that this won't be representative of the final developer experience once the New Architecture is stable. We're working on tools, templates and libraries to help you get started fast on the New Architecture, without having to go through the whole setup.

This section will go over how to enable the new renderer in your app. Make sure your application meets all the prerequisites.

1. Enable Fabric in Podfile

Add changes to your Podfile. You can see some examples in RNTester and rn-demo-app.

Podfile

# Add the following line at the top of Podfile.
# Codegen produces files/classes that share names, and it will show the warning.
# deterministic_uuids option surpresses the warning.
install! 'cocoapods', :deterministic_uuids => false

target 'Some App' do
  pods()
end

def pods()
# Get config
config = use_native_modules!

# Use env variables to turn it on/off.
fabric_enabled = ENV['USE_FABRIC']
use_codegen_discovery= ENV['USE_CODEGEN_DISCOVERY']

# Enabled codegen discovery. This will run the codegen at preinstall time.
# Files are generated at {pod installation root}/build/generated/ios/
if use_codegen_discovery
  Pod::UI.puts "[Codegen] Building target with codegen library discovery enabled."
  pre_install do |installer|
    use_react_native_codegen_discovery!({
        react_native_path: config[:reactNativePath],
        # Modify here if your app root path isn't the same as this one.
        app_path: "#{Dir.pwd}/..",
        fabric_enabled: fabric_enabled,
    })
  end
end

# Pass the flag to enable fabric to use_react_native!.
use_react_native!(
  ...
  :fabric_enabled => fabric_enabled
)

2. Update your root view

The way to render your app with Fabric depends on your setup. Here is an example of how you can enable Fabric in your app with the RN_FABRIC_ENABLED compiler flag to enable/disable. Refer RN-Tester’s AppDelegate as an example.

AppDelegate.mm

#ifdef RN_FABRIC_ENABLED
#import <React/RCTFabricSurfaceHostingProxyRootView.h>
#import <React/RCTSurfacePresenter.h>
#import <React/RCTSurfacePresenterBridgeAdapter.h>
#import <react/config/ReactNativeConfig.h>
#endif

@interface AppDelegate () <RCTCxxBridgeDelegate,
                           RCTTurboModuleManagerDelegate> {
#ifdef RN_FABRIC_ENABLED
  RCTSurfacePresenterBridgeAdapter *_bridgeAdapter;
  std::shared_ptr<const facebook::react::ReactNativeConfig> _reactNativeConfig;
  facebook::react::ContextContainer::Shared _contextContainer;
#endif

  // Find a line that define rootView and replace/edit with the following lines.

#ifdef RN_FABRIC_ENABLED
  _contextContainer = std::make_shared<facebook::react::ContextContainer const>();
  _reactNativeConfig = std::make_shared<facebook::react::EmptyReactNativeConfig const>();

  _contextContainer->insert("ReactNativeConfig", _reactNativeConfig);

  _bridgeAdapter = [[RCTSurfacePresenterBridgeAdapter alloc]
        initWithBridge:_bridge
      contextContainer:_contextContainer];

  _bridge.surfacePresenter = _bridgeAdapter.surfacePresenter;

  UIView *rootView =
      [[RCTFabricSurfaceHostingProxyRootView alloc] initWithBridge:_bridge
                                                        moduleName:@"MyTestApp"
                                                 initialProperties:nil];
#else
  // Current implementation to define rootview.
  RCTRootView *rootView = [[RCTRootView alloc] initWithBridge:bridge
                                                   moduleName:@"MyTestApp"
                                            initialProperties:nil];
#endif

3. Add Babel Plugins

This will trigger the codegen that will run at the metro building time.

babel.config.js

module.exports = {
  presets: ['module:metro-react-native-babel-preset'],
  plugins: [
    '@babel/plugin-proposal-class-properties',
    './node_modules/react-native/packages/babel-plugin-codegen'
  ]
};

4. Run pod install

// Run pod install with the flags
USE_FABRIC=1 RCT_NEW_ARCH_ENABLED=1 pod install