Initializing new project

There are couple of ways to initialize new React Native projects.

For `react-native@0.60.0` or greater

Using `npx` utility:

npx react-native init ProjectName

Note: If you have both yarn and npm installed on your machine, React Native CLI will always try to use yarn, so even if you use npx utility, only react-native executable will be installed using npm and the rest of the work will be delegated to yarn. You can force usage of npm adding --npm flag to the command.

Note: for Yarn users, yarn dlx command similar to npx will be featured in Yarn 2.0: yarnpkg/berry#40 so we’ll be able to use it in a similar fashion.

Installing `react-native` and invoking `init` command:

yarn init && yarn add react-native && yarn react-native init ProjectName

Initializing project with custom version of `react-native`:

# This will use the latest init command but will install react-native@VERSION and use its template
npx react-native init ProjectName --version ${VERSION}

# This will use init command from react-native@VERSION
npx react-native@${VERSION} init ProjectName

Initializing project with custom template.

In following examples TEMPLATE_NAME can be either:

Full package name, eg. react-native-template-typescript.
Absolute path to directory containing template, eg. file:///Users/username/project/some-template.
Absolute path to a tarball created using npm pack.

# This will initialize new project using template from TEMPLATE_NAME package
npx react-native init ProjectName --template ${TEMPLATE_NAME}

# This will initialize new project using init command from react-native@VERSION but will use TEMPLATE_NAME custom template
npx react-native@${VERSION} init ProjectName --template ${TEMPLATE_NAME}

You can force usage of npm if you have both yarn and npm installed on your machine:

npx react-native init ProjectName --npm

For older `react-native` versions

Using legacy react-native-cli package:

yarn global add react-native-cli
react-native init ProjectName

Note: It is not recommended, but you can also use legacy react-native-cli package to initialize projects using latest react-native versions.

Creating custom template

Every custom template needs to have configuration file called template.config.js in the root of the project:

module.exports = {
  // Placeholder name that will be replaced in package.json, index.json, android/, ios/ for a project name.
  placeholderName: 'ProjectName',

  // Directory with the template which will be copied and processed by React Native CLI. Template directory should have package.json with all dependencies specified, including `react-native`.
  templateDir: './template',

  // Path to script, which will be executed after initialization process, but before installing all the dependencies specified in the template. This script runs as a shell script but you can change that (e.g. to Node) by using a shebang (see example custom template).
  postInitScript: './script.js',
};

You can find example custom template here.

Provide feedback

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly

Uh oh!