react-native-navbar-listener

🧭 Prevent React Native apps from overlapping with the Android system navigation bar on some devices by listening for navigation bar height changes and notifying the JavaScript layer.

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🤔 Why

When upgrading to Expo SDK 53, some environments (for example Xiaomi HyperOS and Samsung One UI) showed an issue where bottom navigation or content overlapped the system navigation bar. Related libraries such as react-native-safe-area-context and @react-navigation/material-top-tabs have reports about similar behavior but no immediate plans to fix it. This small library provides a focused workaround by exposing navigation bar height and change events to the React Native JavaScript layer.

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🚀 Quick Start

Installation

npm i react-native-navbar-listener
# or
npx expo install react-native-navbar-listener

Import

import { addNavBarHeightListener, getNavBarHeight } from 'react-native-navbar-listener';

Basic Usage

const getNavBarInitialHeight = async () => {
    const navBarHeight = await getNavBarHeight();
    console.log('NavBarInitialHeight:', navBarHeight);
};

const onNavBarHeightChanged = (navBarHeight: number) => {
    console.log('NavBarHeightChanged:', navBarHeight);
};

useEffect(() => {
    getNavBarInitialHeight();
    const remover = addNavBarHeightListener(onNavBarHeightChanged);
    return remover;
}, []);

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✨ Features

• Compatible with Android 11 (API 30) and above.
• Detects navigation bar height changes via the NavBarHeightChanged event.
• Retrieve the current navigation bar height (in dp) using getNavBarHeight().
• Written in TypeScript with bundled type definitions.

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📱 Supported Environment

• Android 11 (API 30) or higher
  The setWindowInsetsAnimationCallback() API used in this library was introduced in Android 11.

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⚠️ Limitations

• Fallback support for Android 10 and below is not implemented.
• On gesture navigation mode, some devices return 0 dp, while others return around 16 dp (the height of the gesture handle area). This device-dependent discrepancy is not normalized by the library.
• While the implementation uses setWindowInsetsAnimationCallback, only minimum and maximum values are reliably captured — intermediate animation frames may still trigger redundant events. Therefore, debouncing is recommended on the JavaScript side.

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🛠️ Example Usage (Advanced)

import { Dimensions, Platform } from 'react-native';
import { useSafeAreaInsets } from 'react-native-safe-area-context';
import { addNavBarHeightListener, getNavBarHeight } from 'react-native-navbar-listener';
import { debounce } from 'lodash';
const IOS = Platform.OS === 'ios';

// in function component:

const insets = useSafeAreaInsets();
const basePaddingBottom = IOS ? insets.bottom : 0;
const [paddingBottom, setPaddingBottom] = useState(basePaddingBottom);

const onNavBarHeightChanged = debounce((navBarHeight: number) => {
    setPaddingBottom(basePaddingBottom + (navBarHeight || (IOS ? 0 : 16)));
}, 50);

const getNavBarInitialHeight = async () => {
    const navBarHeight = await getNavBarHeight();
    onNavBarHeightChanged(navBarHeight);
};

useEffect(() => {
    getNavBarInitialHeight();
    const remover = addNavBarHeightListener(onNavBarHeightChanged);
    return remover;
}, []);

return (
  <Tab.Navigator style={{ height: Dimensions.get('screen').height, paddingBottom }}>
    {/* your tabs */}
  </Tab.Navigator>
);

Note: Depending on the device, Dimensions.get('window').height may or may not include the navigation bar height. To avoid layout overlap, prefer Dimensions.get('screen').height for full-screen sizing.

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🧩 API Reference

getNavBarHeight(): Promise<number>

Returns the current navigation bar height (in dp).
If the value is 0, the navigation bar is either hidden or the device is using gesture navigation. Some devices return 0, while others return around 16 (the height of the gesture handle area).

addNavBarHeightListener(callback: (height: number) => void): () => void

Registers an event listener that is called when the navigation bar height changes.
Returns a function to remove the listener.

const remove = addNavBarHeightListener(h => console.log(h));
// Remove the listener
remove();

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🧠 Implementation Overview (Android Side)

• Uses WindowInsetsAnimationCompat.Callback on Android 11 and above.
• Retrieves the navigation bar height from WindowInsetsCompat.Type.navigationBars().
• Bridges events to the React Native JavaScript layer via DeviceEventManagerModule.RCTDeviceEventEmitter.

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions, bug reports, and feature requests are welcome. Please open issues or pull requests on the GitHub repository.

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📋 License

MIT License