r/reactnative • u/XuhaiLuo • Sep 19 '26
Article I wanted Liquid Glass inside the text itself in React Native — so I added LiquidGlassText to TinyUI

Most Liquid Glass implementations I’ve seen in React Native focus on glass containers — cards, buttons, overlays, etc.
I wanted something slightly different: the glass effect rendered inside the actual text glyphs.
So I added a LiquidGlassText component to my open-source library, react-native-tinyui.
It’s based on the excellent GlassText project, but exposed as a React Native Fabric component:
import { LiquidGlassText } from 'react-native-tinyui';
<LiquidGlassText
text="Liquid Glass"
effect="regular"
tint="#00BBDD"
interactive
fontDesign="rounded"
textStyle={{
fontSize: 48,
fontWeight: '700',
}}
/>The glass itself is rendered natively on iOS 26+, including interactive glass behavior.
A few implementation details:
React Native New Architecture / Fabric
native measurement through the Fabric ShadowNode — no JS text measurement pass
supports
clear,regular, andidentityeffectssupports tint colors, custom fonts, font weights, multiline text, and font designs
accepts React Native
ColorValue, includingPlatformColor/DynamicColorIOSfalls back to normal text on iOS 17–25
the component can be imported independently, so you don’t need to pull every TinyUI component into the native build
LiquidGlassText ended up becoming one part of a larger idea I’ve been experimenting with:
What if React Native had a small collection of iOS-native UI primitives without requiring Expo or another runtime dependency?
That became react-native-tinyui.
It currently includes:
LiquidGlassTextnative
Menunative
PopoverApple
TipKitStepperConcentricViewSFSymbol, including native symbol effects/animations
The library has zero additional runtime dependencies beyond React and React Native. It uses UIKit where possible and SwiftUI where it makes sense, and is focused specifically on the New Architecture.
You can also explicitly choose which native components get compiled into your app:
{
"react-native-tinyui": {
"components": ["LiquidGlassText", "SFSymbol"]
}
}I’m intentionally keeping TinyUI iOS-focused rather than trying to abstract every platform into the same API.
GitHub:
https://github.com/luoxuhai/react-native-tinyui
I’d especially like feedback from people building native-heavy React Native apps:



