React Native Finish Current Screen while Navigating to Next Screen

Introduction

While we navigate to the next screen from any screen the old screen remains in the stack and after coming back we see the same screen. React Native Finish Current Screen while Navigating to Next Screen includes how we navigate to the next screen and finish the old one from the stack?

Why do we need to finish the current screen while navigating to the next screen?

While developing an application there are some cases which need to change the screen without keeping the last screen. For example, If you have a Splash screen in your App which you want to show for the first time when the user opens the app and never want to show again either by pressing the back button or by any other way.

For this kind of cases we can use replace in place of navigate. As the name specifies replace prop will replace our current screen with the target screen provided as an argument.

navigation.replace('ThirdPage')

Let’s see how we can use replace.

To Make a React Native App

Getting started with React Native will help you to know more about the way you can make a React Native project. We are going to use react native command line interface to make our React Native App.

If you have previously installed a global react-native-cli package, please remove it as it may cause unexpected issues:

npm uninstall -g react-native-cli @react-native-community/cli

Run the following commands to create a new React Native project

npx react-native init ProjectName

If you want to start a new project with a specific React Native version, you can use the --version argument:

npx react-native init ProjectName --version X.XX.X

Note If the above command is failing, you may have old version of react-native or react-native-cli installed globally on your pc. Try uninstalling the cli and run the cli using npx.

This will make a project structure with an index file named App.js in your project directory.

Installation of Dependencies

To navigate between screens we need to add react-navigation and other supporting dependencies.

To install the dependencies open the terminal and jump into your project

cd ProjectName

1. Install react-navigation

npm install @react-navigation/native --save

2. Other supporting libraries react-native-screens and react-native-safe-area-context

npm install react-native-screens react-native-safe-area-context --save

react-native-screens package requires one additional configuration step to properly work on Android devices. Edit MainActivity.java file which is located in android/app/src/main/java/<your package name>/MainActivity.java.

Add the following code to the body of MainActivity class:

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onCreate(null);
}

and make sure to add the following import statement at the top of this file below your package statement:

import android.os.Bundle;

This change is required to avoid crashes related to View state being not persisted consistently across Activity restarts.

3. For the Stack Navigator install

npm install @react-navigation/native-stack --save

CocoaPods Installation

Please use the following command to install CocoaPods

npx pod-install

Project File Structure

To start with this Example you need to create a directory named pages in your project and create two files FirstPge.js and SecondPage.js in it.

Code

Now open App.js in any code editor and replace the code with the following code

App.js

// React Native Finish Current Screen while Navigating to Next Screen
// https://aboutreact.com/react-native-finish-current-screen-while-navigating-to-next-screen/

import React from 'react';

import {NavigationContainer} from '@react-navigation/native';
import { createNativeStackNavigator } from '@react-navigation/native-stack';

import FirstPage from './pages/FirstPage';
import SecondPage from './pages/SecondPage';

const Stack = createNativeStackNavigator();

const App = () => {
  return (
    <NavigationContainer>
      <Stack.Navigator initialRouteName="FirstPage">
        <Stack.Screen
          name="FirstPage"
          component={FirstPage}
          options={{
            title: 'First Page', //Set Header Title
            headerStyle: {
              backgroundColor: '#f4511e', //Set Header color
            },
            headerTintColor: '#fff', //Set Header text color
            headerTitleStyle: {
              fontWeight: 'bold', //Set Header text style
            },
          }}
        />
        <Stack.Screen
          name="SecondPage"
          component={SecondPage}
          options={{
            title: 'Second Page', //Set Header Title
            headerStyle: {
              backgroundColor: '#f4511e', //Set Header color
            },
            headerTintColor: '#fff', //Set Header text color
            headerTitleStyle: {
              fontWeight: 'bold', //Set Header text style
            },
          }}
        />
      </Stack.Navigator>
    </NavigationContainer>
  );
};

export default App;

Open pages/FirstPage.js in any code editor and replace the code with the following code

FirstPage.js

// React Native Finish Current Screen while Navigating to Next Screen
// https://aboutreact.com/react-native-finish-current-screen-while-navigating-to-next-screen/

import React from 'react';
import {Button, View, Text, SafeAreaView} from 'react-native';

const FirstPage = ({navigation}) => {
  return (
    <SafeAreaView style={{flex: 1}}>
      <View style={{flex: 1, padding: 16}}>
        <View
          style={{
            flex: 1,
            alignItems: 'center',
            justifyContent: 'center',
          }}>
          <Text
            style={{
              fontSize: 25,
              textAlign: 'center',
              marginBottom: 16,
            }}>
            This is the First Page of the app
          </Text>
          <Button
            title="Go to Second Sreen"
            onPress={() =>
              navigation.replace('SecondPage', {
                someParam: 'Some Param from previous Screen',
              })
            }
          />
        </View>
        <Text style={{textAlign: 'center', color: 'grey'}}>
          www.aboutreact.com
        </Text>
      </View>
    </SafeAreaView>
  );
};

export default FirstPage;

Open pages/SecondPage.js in any code editor and replace the code with the following code

SecondPage.js

// React Native Finish Current Screen while Navigating to Next Screen
// https://aboutreact.com/react-native-finish-current-screen-while-navigating-to-next-screen/

import React from 'react';
import {View, Text, SafeAreaView} from 'react-native';

const SecondPage = ({route}) => {
  return (
    <SafeAreaView style={{flex: 1}}>
      <View style={{flex: 1, padding: 16}}>
        <View
          style={{
            flex: 1,
            alignItems: 'center',
            justifyContent: 'center',
          }}>
          <Text
            style={{
              fontSize: 25,
              textAlign: 'center',
              marginBottom: 16,
            }}>
            This is Second Page of the App
            {'\n'}
          </Text>
          <Text>{route.params.someParam}</Text>
        </View>
        <Text style={{textAlign: 'center', color: 'grey'}}>
          www.aboutreact.com
        </Text>
      </View>
    </SafeAreaView>
  );
};

export default SecondPage;

To Run the React Native App

Open the terminal again and jump into your project using.

cd ProjectName

1. Start Metro Bundler

First, you will need to start Metro, the JavaScript bundler that ships with React Native. To start Metro bundler run following command

npx react-native start

Once you start Metro Bundler it will run forever on your terminal until you close it. Let Metro Bundler run in its own terminal. Open a new terminal and run the application.

2. Start React Native Application

To run the project on an Android Virtual Device or on real debugging device

npx react-native run-android

or on the iOS Simulator by running (macOS only)

npx react-native run-ios

Output Screenshots

Output in Online Emulator

This is how you can finish current screen while navigating to next screen in React Native. If you have any doubts or you want to share something about the topic you can comment below or contact us here. There will be more posts coming soon. Stay tuned!

Hope you liked it. 🙂