Effortless Skeleton Loading in React Native: Introducing react-native-auto-skeleton

Demo

Skeleton loaders are essential for improving perceived performance and user experience, especially in mobile apps where data fetching can take time. But let’s face it — configuring them manually in React Native is tedious. Defining skeleton views for every block, ensuring consistent styles, adding shimmer... it all takes time.

What if your UI could generate its own skeletons automatically?

That’s exactly what react-native-auto-skeleton does — automatically builds skeleton placeholders based on your existing layout, with zero configuration, full Fabric support, and clean animation out of the box.

🚀 Why This Library Stands Out

Here’s what makes react-native-auto-skeleton unique:

  • No boilerplate setup — wrap your UI with AutoSkeletonView and you're done.
  • Supports both old and new architectures (Fabric-ready).
  • Expo-compatible — works with expo prebuild.
  • Three animation modes: gradient shimmer, pulse, or no animation.
  • Smart defaults for radius, layout, and background.

Unlike other libraries that require verbose configurations for each skeleton block, this one reads your view structure and applies skeletons intelligently.

🛠 How to Use

Installation:

yarn add react-native-auto-skeleton
# or
npm install react-native-auto-skeleton

Basic usage:

import { AutoSkeletonView, AutoSkeletonIgnoreView } from 'react-native-auto-skeleton';

<AutoSkeletonView isLoading={isLoading}>
  <Text style={styles.title}>Loading user profile...Text>
  <AutoSkeletonIgnoreView>
    <Text>This section won’t get a skeletonText>
  AutoSkeletonIgnoreView>
AutoSkeletonView>

You can customize:

  • Shimmer speed
  • Gradient colors
  • Default border radius
  • Animation type (pulse, gradient, or none)

📱 Fabric-Ready and Future-Proof

The library is written with the new architecture in mind. Whether you’re migrating to Fabric or building greenfield, it fits right in. It also supports old architecture, so you can adopt it incrementally.

🆚 How It Compares

Feature react-native-auto-skeleton react-native-skeleton-placeholder
Auto layout parsing ✅ Yes ❌ No
Fabric support ✅ Yes ❌ No
Works with Expo ✅ Yes ⚠️ Partial
Manual block setup required ❌ No ✅ Yes
Built-in shimmer and pulse animation ✅ Yes ✅ Yes

📦 Explore More

If you're building React Native apps in 2024, it’s time to stop writing skeletons manually. Try react-native-auto-skeleton, and enjoy fast, beautiful, and automatic loading states.

✨ Star the project on GitHub if it helps you — it means a lot!

Created and maintained by @pioner92 — feel free to contribute or ask questions!