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Version: 7.x

Nesting navigators

Nesting navigators means rendering a navigator inside a screen of another navigator, for example:

const HomeTabs = createBottomTabNavigator({
  screens: {
    Feed: FeedScreen,
    Messages: MessagesScreen,
  },
});

const RootStack = createNativeStackNavigator({
  screens: {
    Home: {
      screen: HomeTabs,
      options: {
        headerShown: false,
      },
    },
    Profile: ProfileScreen,
  },
});
Try this example on Snack

In the above example, HomeTabs contains a tab navigator. It is also used for the Home screen in your stack navigator in RootStack. So here, a tab navigator is nested inside a stack navigator:

  • RootStack (Stack navigator)
    • HomeTabs (Tab navigator)
      • Feed (screen)
      • Messages (screen)
    • Profile (screen)

Nesting navigators work very much like nesting regular components. To achieve the behavior you want, it's often necessary to nest multiple navigators.

How nesting navigators affects the behaviour​

When nesting navigators, there are some things to keep in mind:

Each navigator keeps its own navigation history​

For example, when you press the back button when inside a screen in a nested stack navigator, it'll go back to the previous screen inside the nested stack even if there's another navigator as the parent.

Each navigator has its own options​

For example, specifying a title option in a screen nested in a child navigator won't affect the title shown in a parent navigator.

If you want to achieve this behavior, see the guide for screen options with nested navigators. this could be useful if you are rendering a tab navigator inside a stack navigator and want to show the title of the active screen inside the tab navigator in the header of the stack navigator.

Each screen in a navigator has its own params​

For example, any params passed to a screen in a nested navigator are in the route object of that screen and aren't accessible from a screen in a parent or child navigator.

If you need to access params of the parent screen from a child screen, you can use React Context to expose params to children.

For example, if you're calling navigation.goBack() in a nested screen, it'll only go back in the parent navigator if you're already on the first screen of the navigator. Other actions such as navigate work similarly, i.e. navigation will happen in the nested navigator and if the nested navigator couldn't handle it, then the parent navigator will try to handle it. In the above example, when calling navigate('Messages'), inside Feed screen, the nested tab navigator will handle it, but if you call navigate('Settings'), the parent stack navigator will handle it.

For example, if you have a stack inside a drawer navigator, the drawer's openDrawer, closeDrawer, toggleDrawer methods etc. will also be available on the navigation object in the screens inside the stack navigator. But say you have a stack navigator as the parent of the drawer, then the screens inside the stack navigator won't have access to these methods, because they aren't nested inside the drawer.

Similarly, if you have a tab navigator inside stack navigator, the screens in the tab navigator will get the push and replace methods for stack in their navigation object.

If you need to dispatch actions to the nested child navigators from a parent, you can use navigation.dispatch:

navigation.dispatch(DrawerActions.toggleDrawer());

Nested navigators don't receive parent's events​

For example, if you have a stack navigator nested inside a tab navigator, the screens in the stack navigator won't receive the events emitted by the parent tab navigator such as (tabPress) when using navigation.addListener.

To receive events from the parent navigator, you can explicitly listen to parent's events with navigation.getParent:

const unsubscribe = navigation
  .getParent('MyTabs')
  .addListener('tabPress', (e) => {
    // Do something
    alert('Tab pressed!');
  });
Try this example on Snack

Here 'MyTabs' refers to the value you pass in the id of the parent tab navigator whose event you want to listen to.

Parent navigator's UI is rendered on top of child navigator​

For example, when you nest a stack navigator inside a drawer navigator, you'll see that the drawer appears above the stack navigator's header. However, if you nest the drawer navigator inside a stack, the drawer will appear below the header of the stack. This is an important point to consider when deciding how to nest your navigators.

In your app, you will probably use these patterns depending on the behavior you want:

  • Tab navigator nested inside the initial screen of stack navigator - New screens cover the tab bar when you push them.
  • Drawer navigator nested inside the initial screen of stack navigator with the initial screen's stack header hidden - The drawer can only be opened from the first screen of the stack.
  • Stack navigators nested inside each screen of drawer navigator - The drawer appears over the header from the stack.
  • Stack navigators nested inside each screen of tab navigator - The tab bar is always visible. Usually pressing the tab again also pops the stack to top.

Consider the following example:

const MoreTabs = createBottomTabNavigator({
  screens: {
    Feed: FeedScreen,
    Messages: MessagesScreen,
  },
});

const RootStack = createNativeStackNavigator({
  screens: {
    Home: HomeScreen,
    More: {
      screen: MoreTabs,
      options: {
        headerShown: false,
      },
    },
  },
});
Try this example on Snack

Here, you might want to navigate to the More screen (which contains MoreTabs) from your HomeScreen component:

navigation.navigate('More');

It works, and the initial screen inside the MoreTabs component is shown, which is Feed. But sometimes you may want to control the screen that should be shown upon navigation. To achieve it, you can pass the name of the screen in params:

navigation.navigate('More', { screen: 'Messages' });

Now, the Messages screen will be rendered instead of Feed upon navigation.

Passing params to a screen in a nested navigator​

You can also pass params by specifying a params key:

navigation.navigate('More', {
  screen: 'Messages',
  params: { user: 'jane' },
})
Try this example on Snack

If the navigator was already rendered, navigating to another screen will push a new screen in case of stack navigator.

You can follow a similar approach for deeply nested screens. Note that the second argument to navigate here is just params, so you can do something like:

navigation.navigate('Home', {
  screen: 'Settings',
  params: {
    screen: 'Sound',
    params: {
      screen: 'Media',
    },
  },
});

In the above case, you're navigating to the Media screen, which is in a navigator nested inside the Sound screen, which is in a navigator nested inside the Settings screen.

Rendering initial route defined in the navigator​

By default, when you navigate a screen in the nested navigator, the specified screen is used as the initial screen and the initialRouteName prop on the navigator is ignored.

If you need to render the initial route specified in the navigator, you can disable the behaviour of using the specified screen as the initial screen by setting initial: false:

navigation.navigate('Root', {
  screen: 'Settings',
  initial: false,
});

This affects what happens when pressing the back button. When there's an initial screen, the back button will take the user there.

Avoiding multiple headers when nesting​

When nesting multiple stack, drawer or bottom tab navigators, headers from both child and parent navigators would be shown. However, usually it's more desirable to show the header in the child navigator and hide the header in the screen of the parent navigator.

To achieve this, you can hide the header in the screen containing the navigator using the headerShown: false option.

For example:

const HomeTabs = createBottomTabNavigator({
  screens: {
    Feed: FeedScreen,
    Messages: MessagesScreen,
  },
});

const RootStack = createNativeStackNavigator({
  screens: {
    Home: {
      screen: HomeTabs,
      options: {
        headerShown: false,
      },
    },
    Profile: ProfileScreen,
  },
});
Try this example on Snack

In these examples, we have used a bottom tab navigator directly nested inside another stack navigator, but the same principle applies when there are other navigators in the middle, for example: stack navigator inside a tab navigator which is inside another stack navigator, stack navigator inside drawer navigator etc.

If you don't want headers in any of the navigators, you can specify headerShown: false in all of the navigators:

const HomeTabs = createBottomTabNavigator({
  screenOptions: {
    headerShown: false,
  },
  screens: {
    Feed: FeedScreen,
    Messages: MessagesScreen,
  },
});

const RootStack = createStackNavigator({
  screenOptions: {
    headerShown: false,
  },
  screens: {
    Home: HomeTabs,
    Profile: ProfileScreen,
  },
});

Best practices when nesting​

We recommend to reduce nesting navigators to minimal. Try to achieve the behavior you want with as little nesting as possible. Nesting has many downsides:

  • It results in deeply nested view hierarchy which can cause memory and performance issues in lower end devices
  • Nesting same type of navigators (e.g. tabs inside tabs, drawer inside drawer etc.) might lead to a confusing UX
  • With excessive nesting, code becomes difficult to follow when navigating to nested screens, configuring deep link etc.

Think of nesting navigators as a way to achieve the UI you want rather than a way to organize your code. If you want to create separate group of screens for organization, instead of using separate navigators, you can use the Group component for dynamic configuration or groups property for static configuration.

const MyStack = createStackNavigator({
  screens: {
    // Common screens
  },
  groups: {
    // Common modal screens
    Modal: {
      screenOptions: {
        presentation: 'modal',
      },
      screens: {
        Help,
        Invite,
      },
    },
    // Screens for logged in users
    User: {
      if: useIsLoggedIn,
      screens: {
        Home,
        Profile,
      },
    },
    // Auth screens
    Guest: {
      if: useIsGuest,
      screens: {
        SignIn,
        SignUp,
      },
    },
  },
});