useNativeDriver for 60fps Animations
Enable useNativeDriver: true on timing and spring animations to offload work to the native thread, understand which properties support it, and measure the performance improvement.
The JavaScript Bridge Problem
React Native traditionally communicates between JavaScript and the native layer through a bridge — an asynchronous message channel. During animations, style updates must cross this bridge on every frame. If the JavaScript thread is busy (processing data, rendering, or garbage collecting), frames are dropped and animations stutter.
On a 60fps display, you have only ~16ms per frame to do all work. Any JavaScript overhead beyond that causes visible jank. For animations that update properties like opacity and transform, there is a better way: the native driver.
What useNativeDriver Does
When you set useNativeDriver: true, React Native serializes the animation configuration (start value, end value, duration, easing) and sends it to the native side once before the animation starts. The native layer then runs the animation entirely without touching JavaScript on each frame.
This means the animation continues smoothly even if JavaScript is blocked — loading data, parsing JSON, or running heavy logic. The result is consistently smooth 60fps animations on both iOS and Android.
Animated.timing(opacity, {
toValue: 1,
duration: 500,
useNativeDriver: true, // offloads to native thread
}).start();
// JavaScript thread can now do other work
// without affecting animation smoothnessAll lessons in this course
- Animated.Value and Animated.View
- Spring and Decay Animations
- Animating Multiple Properties in Parallel and Sequence
- useNativeDriver for 60fps Animations