react-native-skia

React Native Skia puts Google's Skia graphics engine, the one that draws Chrome, Android, and Flutter, inside React Native. That means real 2D drawing: custom shapes, shaders, image filters, and animations that run at native speed instead of choking the JS thread. Shopify maintains it, it's MIT, and it's free.

It's a native module, so it's not a drop-in npm package. You deal with native build steps, minimum platform versions, and a bigger app binary. Budget a little setup time and expect to rebuild the app, not just reload JS.

Anyone building custom visuals in React Native, charts, drawing tools, elaborate transitions, wants this, solo or team, and it costs nothing. The catch is that it's low-level. Skia hands you a canvas and a brush, not finished components, so you write the drawing and animation logic yourself, and the newest high-performance backend is still experimental. Real power, real work.