Tutorial on React Native Hooks to Build React Native App

Quick Summary:

React Native Hooks, introduced in the 16.8 version, is a function that allows you to utilize state and lifecycle features in functional components. It simplifies the development by decreasing the class feature requirements and ensures that your code is cleaner, reusable, and more manageable.

Introduction

React Native continues to be a top choice for building cross-platform mobile apps efficiently. A significant enhancement within this framework is React Native Hooks. This modern approach simplifies how developers manage app behavior like state, user interactions, and data flow using functional components instead of traditional classes.

By leveraging hooks, your development teams can write cleaner, more modular code, leading to faster development cycles, easier maintenance, and greater scalability. This not only reduces technical overhead but also accelerates time to market, making it a smart, forward-looking choice for businesses investing in mobile solutions.

Prerequisites To Using React Native Hooks

React 16.8 or later – Hooks are only available in React and React Native versions 16.8 and above.
Functional Components – Hooks are designed for use within functional components, not class-based ones.
Basic Understanding of React Native – Developers should be comfortable with core concepts like components, props, and state.
Familiarity with JavaScript ES6+ – Since hooks often use modern JavaScript features like destructuring and arrow functions, familiarity with ES6+ syntax is essential.

Understanding Hooks in React Native

Hooks in React Native are functions that allow developers to manage app behavior—like handling user input, fetching data, or updating the UI—directly within functional components. Traditionally, such logic required complex class components, but hooks simplify this by making code cleaner, more modular, and easier to maintain.

Commonly used React Native hooks include useState for managing local state, useEffect for handling side effects like API calls, and useContext for sharing data across components. By using hooks, development teams can build apps faster, reduce bugs, and scale features more efficiently—all contributing to better performance and lower long-term development costs.

Why Hooks?

Here are a few reasons for using hooks in your React Native application.

Different ways of doing the same things.
No more complex lifecycle methods.
Simpler code. No more mapStateToProps, mapDispatchToprops with Redux.
Hooks avoid the whole confusion with ‘this’ keyword.
Hooks allow you to reuse stateful logic without changing your component hierarchy.
Hooks let us organize the logic inside a component into reusable isolated units.

Now let’s learn how we move from a class to a functional component.

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React Native Hooks Lifecycle Stages

React Native Hooks follow three lifecycle patterns: Initial Render, Updates, and Unmount. These stages provide a simpler and more functional approach to using Hooks in React Native.

1. Initial Render

This stage occurs when the component is initiated for the first time. During this phase, the useState hook begins the component’s state, and the useEffect hook can allow you to fetch data, set up event listeners, and perform tasks that are required to run after the component render starts.

getDerivedStateFromProps
   		useEffect( ()=>{},[propp1, prop2])
	componentDidMount
		useEffect( ()=> {},[])

2. Updates

This stage is triggered whenever a small change is required in the component props or state. In this Updates stage, the component re-renders to display the updated data. Moreover, optimization hooks like useCallback or UseEffect can streamline its logic and prevent unnecessary function recreations during updates.

getDerivedStateFromProps
   		useEffect( ()=>{},[propp1, prop2])

shouldComponentUpdate()
	useMemo()

componentdidUpdate()
	useEffect( ()=>{})

getSnapshotBeforeUpdate
	custom Hook to hold previous state

3. Unmount

The final stage, Unmount, occurs when you want to remove components from the DOM. It enables you to eliminate event listeners, terminate subscriptions, and precise timers. In simpler words, it is a cleaner phase where the irrelevant functions are removed and there are no unnecessary resources.

		useEffect( ()=>{return()=>{//cleanup}},[])

Thus, we can use hooks to handle states, effects, and context with the help of useState, useEffect, and useContext.

Let’s move towards our next section and dive deeper into hooks.

Hooks in React Native: Different Classification

There are three basic react-native hooks and seven additional hooks. Each hooks in React Native is explicitly designed to address the use cases and streamline the development process. Let’s look at detailed classification for your React Native hook.

Basic Hooks
(1) useState
(2) useEffect
(3) useContext

Additional Hooks:
(1) useReducer
(2) useCallback
(3) useMemo
(4) useRef
(5) useImperativeHandle
(6) useLayoutEffect
(7) useDebugValue

How React Native Hooks Example Simplify Components and State?

In this tutorial, we will cover useState, useEffect, useContext, useReducer, useMemo, useCallback, and useRef.

useState

useState is like this.state() in class. We are going to use useState instead of this.state() to update the state value. Unlike the class, the state is not an object here. We have to initialize the useState() with some value. It can be a number or string, whatever we want. If you have to store multiple values, then you have to call useState() for each value.

Syntax

The image below would help you understand hooks better.

This example declares a state variable name initialized with an empty string. The variable value will be changed when writing in the text input name.

Const [data, setData] = useState( // value )

The below image would help to understand hooks better.

This example declares a state variable name initialized with an empty string. When writing in the text input name, the variable value will be changed.

Also Read:

How to Use Redux with React Hooks in React Native Application?

useEffect

useEffect is worked as per class lifecycle componentDidMount, componentWillUnMount, componentdidUpdate. useEffect is just re-render the Component and changing the state variable’s value. uesEffect accepts two arguments and doesn’t return anything.

The first argument is a function that holds the code whatever you want to execute at run time. The second argument is optional when you want to execute the hooks. If you do not pass anything to this argument, your function will be called on mount and every update.

import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react"; 
import { View, Text } from "react-native",

const Example = (props) => {
const [count, setCount] = useState(0)

useEffect(() => { 
setInterval(() => {
setCount(count + 1); 
   }, 1000); 
})

return( 
  <View 
style={{ 
flex: 1, 
alignItems: “center”, 
justifyContent: “center”}}
   >
	<Text style={{ fontSize: 50 }}>
Count is incremented {count} times
</Text>
  </View>
 );
}

export default Example;

The above example shows how we can apply useEffect in functional components. At interval time, the state value will be changed. useEffect() is a side effect used as an event handler to change the state value when you want.

useContext

This is another hook for anyone unfamiliar with context API in react native. First, let’s have a look at it. Consider the below image that shows an application has many components.

App Component is our parent component, and within the App component, there are various child components.

You can see the dependency tree in the image above. Here, we have a limitation of a three-level hierarchy. Imagine if we have a 10 to 20-level hierarchy. In such cases, the use of the context hook reduces our efforts to pass props to every level.

const value = useContext(MyContext);

Don’t forget that the argument to useContext must be the context object itself. Now let you get some basic knowledge about Additional Hooks.

useReducer

UseReducer, an additional hook, as a state management tool. Okay, now don’t we already have useState for state management? Yes, we do have. But, under a few conditions and requirements, it is advisable to use useReducer rather than useState. The next question would be these requirements and the difference between hooks.

To know the difference, let’s have an example. Here we are going to take a counter-example again.

import React, { useReducer } from "react";
import { View, Text ,Button) from "react-native",
import { reducer } from "redux-form";

const initialState = 0; 
const reducer = (state, action) => {
     switch(action){ 
case 'increment':
    return state + 1; 
case 'decrement':
                return state - 1; 
case 'reset':
                return initialState; 
default:
     return state;
          }
   }
 
 const Example = (props) => {
 const [count, dispatch) = useReducer( reducer, initialState),

 return (
	<View 		
   style={{ 
flex: 1, 
alignItems: “center”, 
justifyContent: “center”
         }}
      >
	   <Text>Count = {count}</Text>
    	   <Button title=’Increment’ onPress= {()=> dispatch(‘increment’)} />
         <Button title=’Decrement’ onPress= {()=> dispatch(‘decrement’)} />
         <Button title=Reset onPress= {()=> dispatch(reset)} />



</View>
    );
  }

export default Example;

We can handle the different actions at once with useReducer. Run the project; we can increase, decrease, and reset the count value by clicking on the increment, decrement, and reset.

useReducer vs. useState

1. Depends on the type of state. If you need to use string, boolean or number value, then choose use useState. And if array or object, then go with the useReducer.

2. The second scenario depends on the number of transitions. If you are updating one or two states, then use useState. And if there are too many updates, then use useReducer.

3. The third one depends on the business logic for the state transition. If you do the complex transition or transfer value old to the new, then better to use useReducer.

4. The fourth is for local or global states. If your state is within the one component, you can use useState, and if it is at a global level, you must go with useReducer.

useCallback

The useCallback hook helps optimize performance by memoizing functions. Usually, functions are recreated every time a component re-renders. With useCallback, a function is only recreated if one of its dependencies changes.

This is particularly useful when passing callbacks to child components, as it prevents unnecessary re-renders. Like useEffect, useCallback takes a function and an array of dependencies. If any dependency changes, the function is re-executed; otherwise, the cached value is returned.

For example, when a parent component passes props to a child, the child’s props are recalculated on every parent re-render. Using useCallback() can prevent this unnecessary recalculation, improving performance.

useCallback(()=>{
	dosomething()
},[dependencies])

Let’s go deeper for more understanding.

import React, { useState } from "react";
import { View, Text, Button } from "react-native";

const Example = (props) => {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  const increment = () => {
    setCount(count + 1);
  };

  const decrement = () => {
    setCount(count - 1);
  };

  const resetCount = () => {
    setCount(0);
  };

  return (
    <View style={{ flex: 1, alignItems: "center", justifyContent: "center" }}>
      <Text>Count = {count}</Text>
      <Button title="Increment" onPress={increment} />
      <Button title="Decrement" onPress={decrement} />
      <Button title="Reset" onPress={resetCount} />
    </View>
  );
};

In the above example, the problem is that all three functions are re-created whenever the counter value is updated. In this case, it is not a big problem to recreate the function unless we don’t have multiple functions. For an application, this might be a big problem in performance for our app. For this problem, we can use useCallback(). So in the above example, we can warp all these functions with useCallback().


const increment = useCallback(() => { 
      setCount(count + 1) 
}, [count]) 
const decrement = useCallback(() => { 
      setCount(count - 1) 
}, [count]) 
const reset = useCallback(() => { 
     resetCount(reset) 
}, [reset]);

So now you click any of the counters, the related state will be changed and re-initialized. for the better and to prevent optimization, we can use the useCallback() hook.

useMemo

The useMemo() hook is similar to useCallback(), but instead of returning a memoized callback, useMemo() returns a memoized value. If your application involves heavy data processing, useMemo() can significantly improve performance.

It runs only on the initial render and then caches the result, returning the memoized value on subsequent renders. For example, if you need to pass a userName across multiple components, useMemo() ensures the operation is performed only once, and the result is quickly retrieved when needed.

This caching mechanism helps optimize performance by reducing unnecessary recalculations.

useMemo(()=>{
	dosomething()
},[dependencies])

If you don’t want to pass arguments, remember to add an empty array as a parameter to useMemo(); otherwise, memoization will not happen. And if you wish to pass arguments, you can also pass them.

useRef

useRef is like a container that can store mutable values in its .current property. With Ref, we can access all the DOM nodes and elements and keep a mutable variable. We all know about a ref in React Native.

Syntax

const refContainer = useRef(initialValue);

Creating createRef in the functional component will create a new instance at every render of DOM. Updating a ref is a side effect. It must be done inside the useEffect() or an event handler. However, the component will not re-render when the useRef value changes. For that, we can use useState().

Some Rules

“Only call Hooks at the top level.”
Don’t call hooks inside loops, conditions, or nested functions.

“Only call Hooks from react-native functions.”
Call hooks from React Native Components or Custom Hooks; don’t call them from regular functions.

Caution Against Overusing React Native Hooks

1. Unnecessary Re-renders
Excessive use of state or memoization hooks can trigger unnecessary re-renders, slowing down your app and making it feel unresponsive. Only track state that actually affects your UI.

2. Overcomplicated Components
If a component relies on several hooks with tangled logic, it quickly becomes hard to read, test, or debug. When a component starts to do too much, it’s a good sign that some logic should be moved into a custom hook or broken into smaller components.

3. Common useEffect Mistakes
useEffect is often misused. Relying on it for data fetching, timers, or subscriptions without fully understanding the dependency array can lead to bugs, repeated API calls, or memory leaks. Keep your effects focused and avoid side effects during render.

4. Misusing useContext
While useContext is helpful for passing down a global state, using it too broadly can lead to tightly coupled components and re-renders across unrelated parts of your app. Consider more scalable solutions like Zustand or Redux when the global state grows complex.

Best Practices For Using React Native Hooks

Using React Native hooks effectively means knowing when and how to apply them. The goal is to write code that’s easy to understand, maintain, and optimize without overcomplicating the logic or hurting performance.

Use state only when it directly affects rendering or behavior.
Keep useEffect focused and avoid placing unrelated logic inside.
Extract shared or complex logic into custom hooks.
Leverage useMemo and useCallback only when profiling shows performance issues.
Break down large components into smaller, reusable pieces.
Avoid deeply nested or chained hooks in a single component.
Don’t treat hooks as replacements for good structure or architecture.

Conclusion

If you are looking for assistance in building a React Native application with React Native Hooks, then get in touch with us for dynamic results. We are a globally renowned React Native app development company, and we have well-versed React Native developers who have top-of-the-line expertise in building apps with Hooks React Native. Also, for more such tutorials, you can visit the React Native tutorials page and explore more.