Elevation and border radius do not work well with opacity from Android 9

[d4rky-pl]

The way elevation works is that it creates a border around the element that is then shifted to the bottom. The background color of the element then hides the inside part of the border.

When we apply border radius to the same element, the border gets thicker to accommodate for the increased radius. So far so good.

Unfortunately if we then apply the opacity to the parent, the background color of the element gets semitransparent, making the border visible and creating an ugly effect.

React Native version: 0.57
Expo SDK 32
Android version: 9.0

Steps To Reproduce

Create an element and apply, elevation, border radius and background color. Then apply opacity on its parent.

Describe what you expected to happen:

The border underneath the element should not leak out

Snack, code example, or link to a repository:

https://snack.expo.io/SJDAlu6TV

[ferrannp]

I think this is related to #23090 and react-navigation/react-navigation#5535.

[lukewalczak]

Seems like the issue is reproducible only on Android version 9.0 (I was testing that bug also on Android version 7.0 and 8.1 where it looks properly).

[seriiix]

Facing this issue with RN 0.59.8 as well.

[PierreCapo]

Tested on 0.59.9 and got the same problem as well. That makes the app really ugly on Android 9

[NicholasBertazzonAga]

Still facing the issue on RN 0.60.4

[ivosousaa]

Still happening for me too, and have not found a workaround yet either.

[sergchernata]

Still an issue.

[WickedBrat]

Using backgroundColor: '#fff' sets it right and works as expected.

[yunjeongloper]

Still not work well.

[Sofianio]

I'm having the same issue with RN 0.61.4 ... no possible fix or workaround?

PS: I got the issue on Android 7.1.1 as well as Android 9

[toro705]

Having the same problem, when fading out with opacity, the back shadow looks unaceptable. Any updates on this?

[se09deluca]

Hi there! Same issue, look at this:

It looks good on a 5.5" display with Android Pie. Instead on a 6.67" display with Android Q it looks like in the image.

Style props:

{
        width: 70, height: 70,
        flexDirection: "row", justifyContent: "center", alignItems: "center",
        backgroundColor: "#10aaae",
        borderStyle: "solid",
        borderRadius: 50,
        borderWidth: 7,
        borderColor: "rgba(16, 170, 174, 0.2)",
        elevation: 10,
        shadowColor: "#10aaae",
        shadowRadius: 7,
        shadowOpacity: .5,
        shadowOffset : { width: 0, height: 10 }
}

Hope it could help in resolving! 🤞🏻

[Theng]

@ferrannp hello sir, is there anyways to make this bug more priority. I am waiting for this too long sir.

[BlueFits]

Using backgroundColor: '#fff' sets it right and works as expected.

worked for me, what happened was my component was transparent hence i can see whats happening in the back, setting a background color makes it work as intended

[sergchernata]

Using backgroundColor: '#fff' sets it right and works as expected.

worked for me, what happened was my component was transparent hence i can see whats happening in the back, setting a background color makes it work as intended

The problem is that if you lower or animate the opacity of this element, fading it out, the background color doesn't help. You can still see the shadow being rendered underneath, like a thick border.

[simongoot]

I found that this problem occur when changing opacity on a wrapping element that contain child elements using elevation for shadow.
What fixed this bug for me temporarily was to set flag needsOffscreenAlphaCompositing on the wrapping element that i animated opacity style prop for. (For best practice usage check: https://reactnative.dev/docs/view#needsoffscreenalphacompositing) Otherwise setting opacity on each of the child elements should also work, instead of only the parent wrapper.

This was mentioned here: #23090 (comment)

[kesha-antonov]

I have a function that resizes px size based on a device's width.
In my cases it rounded 21.09 to 21.090909...
Passing 21 to wrapping element fixed issue with shadow

[stevenelkhaldi]

What helped me when I wanted a wrapping element to have opacity and its children to have shadow and elevation while removing the buggy effect of seeing the border is that instead of applying the opacity through the opacity key (e.g., opacity: 0.7), I applied it through backgroundColor (e.g., '#FFFFFFB2'). This got rid of the effect for me.

[ccfz]

Using @simongoot solution, needsOffscreenAlphaCompositing worked great. In case someone else has the problem with a TouchableOpacity, where needsOffscreenAlphaCompositing did not work for me. You can replace the TouchableOpacity with an Animated Presseable and then animate the opacity via onPressIn and onPressOut.

import { Pressable, Animated } from 'react-native';
const AnimatedPressable = Animated.createAnimatedComponent(Pressable);

const Button = ({children}) => {
  const animatedButtonOpacity = useRef(new Animated.Value(1));
  
  const buttonOpacity = {
    opacity: animatedButtonOpacity.current
  };
  return (
    <>
      {properties.map((property, index) => (
        <AnimatedPressable
          onPressIn={() => animatedButtonOpacity.current.setValue(0.5)}
          onPressOut={() => animatedButtonOpacity.current.setValue(1)}
          onPres={...}
          style={buttonOpacity}
          needsOffscreenAlphaCompositing
        >
          {children}
        </AnimatedPressable>
      ))}
    </>
  );
};

[danielolamide]

Seems like needsOffscreenAlphaCompositing isn't working for me. Anyone else encountered and sorted this?

[fellenabmb]

Seems like needsOffscreenAlphaCompositing isn't working for me. Anyone else encountered and sorted this?

Encountered, yes. Sorted, no. This is still a thing.
Basically, I have an Animated.View with shadows (elevation in Android and shadows in iOS, that is) in a sort-of card component that I re-use a lot in my app.
On iOS it works just fine, but on android, the view with elevation doesn't like opacity at all. That is, TouchableOpacity (touchables with a shadow) or animations regarding opacity.

So my guess is, this issue is still going on. Currently running the latest RN version, I might add.

[louielyl]

I discovered a simple way to fix the problem, which is adding an opacity property to the child component to overide the effect done by the parent element, such as opacity: 0.99;, see if it works for you.

[LarsDepuydt]

I discovered a simple way to fix the problem, which is adding an opacity property to the child component to overide the effect done by the parent element, such as opacity: 0.99;, see if it works for you.

This does not work for me, is there already another fix?
(Expect from using two View components (one for shadow and one for the background color with opacity))

[aprilmintacpineda]

Setting backgroundColor: '#fff' works.

[mmkhmk]

Any updates? I'm facing the same issue, and either backgroundColor: #fff or opacity: 0.99 worked for me.

[mathbalduino]

Still buggy...

[fabOnReact]

Workaround was published here. Do you believe it worth fixing this issue in react-native?

[fazal26]

still facing issue