react-native-community-cli/docs/init.md

Initializing new project

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

For [email protected] 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: https://github.com/yarnpkg/berry/pull/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.
• Shorthand name of template, eg. typescript.
• Absolute path to directory containing template, eg. file:///Users/username/project/some-template.

# 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.
  postInitScript: "./script.js",
};

You can find example custom template here.