AppState can tell you if the app is in the foreground or background, and notify you when the state changes.

AppState is frequently used to determine the intent and proper behavior when handling push notifications.

App States

For more information, see Apple's documentation

Basic Usage

To see the current state, you can check AppState.currentState , which will be kept up-to-date. However, currentState will be null at launch while AppState retrieves it over the bridge.

import React, {Component} from 'react'
import {AppState, Text} from 'react-native'
class AppStateExample extends Component {
  state = {
    appState: AppState.currentState
  componentDidMount() {
    AppState.addEventListener('change', this._handleAppStateChange);
  componentWillUnmount() {
    AppState.removeEventListener('change', this._handleAppStateChange);
  _handleAppStateChange = (nextAppState) => {
    if (this.state.appState.match(/inactive|background/) && nextAppState === 'active') {
      console.log('App has come to the foreground!')
    this.setState({appState: nextAppState});
  render() {
    return (
      <Text>Current state is: {this.state.appState}</Text>
This example will only ever appear to say "Current state is: active" because the app is only visible to the user when in the active state, and the null state will happen only momentarily.
Methods
addEventListener
removeEventListener
Properties
currentState
Reference
Methods
addEventListener()
addEventListener(type, handler);
Add a handler to AppState changes by listening to the change event type and providing the handler
Parameters:
NameTypeRequiredDescription
typestringYes
handlerfunctionYes
TODO: now that AppState is a subclass of NativeEventEmitter, we could deprecate addEventListener and removeEventListener and just use addListener and listener.remove() directly. That will be a breaking change though, as both the method and event names are different (addListener events are currently required to be globally unique).
removeEventListener()
removeEventListener(type, handler);
Remove a handler by passing the change event type and the handler
Parameters:
NameTypeRequiredDescription
typestringYes
handlerfunctionYes