Disable back button in react navigation

Question

I\'m using react native navigation (react-navigation) StackNavigator. it starts from the Login page throughout the whole lifecycle of the app. I don\'t want to have a back

Answer 1

The best option to handle this situation is to use SwitchNavigator provided by React navigation. The purpose of SwitchNavigator is to only ever show one screen at a time. By default, it does not handle back actions and it resets routes to their default state when you switch away. This is the exact behavior that is needed in the authentication flow.

This is a typical way to implement it.

1. Create 2 stack navigators: One for authentication (sign in, sign up, forgot password, etc) and another for the main APP
2. Create a screen in which you will check which route from switch navigator you want to show (I usually check this in splash screen by checking if a token is stored in Async storage)

Here is a code implementation of above statements

import { createAppContainer, createSwitchNavigator } from 'react-navigation';
import { createStackNavigator } from 'react-navigation-stack';
import HomeScreen from "./homeScreenPath" 
import OtherScreen from "./otherScreenPath"
import SignInScreen from "./SignInScreenPath" 
import SplashScreen from "./SplashScreenPath"

const AppStack = createStackNavigator({ Home: HomeScreen, Other: OtherScreen });

const AuthStack = createStackNavigator({ SignIn: SignInScreen });


export default createAppContainer(
  createSwitchNavigator(
    {
      Splash: SplashScreen,
      App: AppStack,
      Auth: AuthStack,
    },
    {
      initialRouteName: 'Splash',
    }
  )
);

Now in SplashScreen you will check the token and navigate accordingly

import React from 'react';
import {
  ActivityIndicator,
  AsyncStorage,
  StatusBar,
  StyleSheet,
  View,
} from 'react-native';

class SplashScreen extends React.Component {
  componentDidMount() {
    this.checkIfLogin();
  }

  // Fetch the token from storage then navigate to our appropriate place
  checkIfLogin = async () => {
    const userToken = await AsyncStorage.getItem('userToken');

    // This will switch to the App screen or Auth screen and this splash
    // screen will be unmounted and thrown away.
    this.props.navigation.navigate(userToken ? 'App' : 'Auth');
  };

  // Render any loading content that you like here
  render() {
    return (
      <View>
        <ActivityIndicator />
        <StatusBar barStyle="default" />
      </View>
    );
  }
}

Once you change routes in SwitchNavigator it removes the older route automatically and hence if you press the back button it will not take you to the auth/login screens anymore

Answer 2

The SwitchNavigator would be the way to accomplish this. SwitchNavigator resets the default routes and unmounts the authentication screen when the navigate action is invoked.

import { createSwitchNavigator, createStackNavigator, createAppContainer } from 'react-navigation';

// Implementation of HomeScreen, OtherScreen, SignInScreen, AuthLoadingScreen
// goes here.

const AppStack = createStackNavigator({ Home: HomeScreen, Other: OtherScreen });
const AuthStack = createStackNavigator({ SignIn: SignInScreen });

export default createAppContainer(createSwitchNavigator(
  {
    AuthLoading: AuthLoadingScreen,
    App: AppStack,
    Auth: AuthStack,
  },
  {
    initialRouteName: 'AuthLoading',
  }
));

After the user goes to the SignInScreen and enters their credentials, you would then call

this.props.navigation.navigate('App');

Answer 3

You can hide the back button using left:null, but for android devices it's still able to go back when the user presses the back button. You need to reset the navigation state and hide the button with left:null

Here are the docs for resetting navigation state: https://reactnavigation.org/docs/navigators/navigation-actions#Reset

This solution works for react-navigator 1.0.0-beta.7, however left:null no longer works for the latest version.

Answer 4

For react-navigation version 4.x

navigationOptions: () => ({
      title: 'Configuration',
      headerBackTitle: null,
      headerLayoutPreset:'center',
      headerLeft: null
    })

Answer 5

i think it is simple just add headerLeft : null , i am using react-native cli, so this is the example :

static navigationOptions = {
    headerLeft : null
};

Answer 6

Have you considered using this.props.navigation.replace( "HomeScreen" ) instead of this.props.navigation.navigate( "HomeScreen" ).

This way you are not adding anything to the stack. so HomeScreen won't wave anything to go back to if back button pressed in Android or screen swiped to the right in IOS.

More informations check the Documentation. And of course you can hide the back button by setting headerLeft: null in navigationOptions