Introduction#

Plain Text is a faster, lighter alternative to React Native's built-in <Text> component that focuses on single-style text. This covers most real-world text: headers, labels, body copy.

It renders straight to the platform's native text views: UILabel on iOS, TextView on Android, instead of using React Native's text layout pipeline.

The tradeoff: one style, no nested <Text>.

See the list of supported props and styles.

Should you use it?#

For most apps, React Native's <Text> is a reasonable choice. Two reasons to pick <PlainText> instead:

1. Performance: on screens that mount a lot of single-style labels at once, like feeds and long lists, it renders faster and uses less memory. See benchmarks.
2. Features and bug fixes missing from RN <Text>: such as fontVariationSettings and verticalAlign / textAlignVertical on iOS. See Improvements over RN Text.

You can mix it with <Text> in the same screen and only use it where it earns its place. A unified Text component uses conditional rendering to pick between the two for you.

License#

MIT