Master Blur View on React Native Android: 3 Top Ways 2025

Introduction: The Allure of the Blur

From iOS's iconic frosted glass control center to the elegant glassmorphism trend dominating modern UI design, the blur effect is more than just a stylistic choice—it's a powerful tool for creating depth, focus, and a sophisticated user experience. In React Native, implementing a beautiful blur view on iOS is often a straightforward affair. Android, however, has always been a different story.

Historically, achieving a performant, high-quality blur on Android has been a significant challenge for React Native developers. Legacy methods were often slow, inconsistent, or relied on deprecated APIs like RenderScript. But the landscape is rapidly evolving. As we head into 2025, the ecosystem has matured, offering powerful new solutions that make mastering the blur effect on Android not just possible, but practical.

This comprehensive guide will walk you through the three best methods for implementing a blur view in your React Native Android app in 2025. We'll compare their strengths, weaknesses, and show you how to get started with each one.

Why is Blur on Android So Tricky?

The core difficulty stems from how Android's native rendering pipeline works. Unlike iOS, which has built-in, highly optimized blur effects (UIVisualEffectView) at the OS level, Android has historically lacked a simple, high-performance equivalent. Developers had to:

• Capture a bitmap: Take a snapshot of the view behind the blur area.
• Downsample it: Shrink the bitmap to improve performance.
• Apply a blur algorithm: Run a computationally expensive blur operation on the pixels.
• Render the blurred bitmap: Display the result.

This multi-step process is slow and can easily cause dropped frames, especially if the content underneath the blur is dynamic. The deprecation of RenderScript, a once-popular framework for these intensive computations, further complicated matters, pushing the community towards more modern, performant graphics engines.

The 3 Top Ways to Implement Blur View in 2025

Let's dive into the top contenders for creating blur effects on Android today, from the tried-and-true to the cutting-edge.

Method 1: @react-native-community/blur (The Classic Choice)

The @react-native-community/blur package is the long-standing, go-to solution for many developers. It provides a simple <BlurView> component that wraps the native platform-specific implementations.

How to Implement It

First, add the package to your project:

npm install @react-native-community/blur

Then, you can use it in your component like any other view. It wraps the underlying content, blurring everything rendered behind it within its bounds.

import { BlurView } from "@react-native-community/blur";
import { View, Text, StyleSheet, ImageBackground } from 'react-native';

const MyBlurComponent = () => (
  <ImageBackground source={require('./background.jpg')} style={styles.container}>
    <View style={styles.contentWrapper}>
      {/* This BlurView will blur the ImageBackground */}
      <BlurView
        style={styles.absolute}
        blurType="dark" // Or "light", "xlight", "dark", "prominent", "regular"
        blurAmount={10} // A number from 1 to 100
        reducedTransparencyFallbackColor="white"
      />
      <Text style={styles.text}>Hello Frosted Glass</Text>
    </View>
  </ImageBackground>
);

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: { flex: 1 },
  contentWrapper: {
    flex: 1,
    justifyContent: 'center',
    alignItems: 'center',
  },
  absolute: {
    position: "absolute",
    top: 0, left: 0, bottom: 0, right: 0,
  },
  text: {
    fontSize: 24,
    fontWeight: 'bold',
    color: 'white',
  }
});

Pros & Cons

• Pros: Extremely easy to set up and use. A simple, declarative API. Strong community support and long history.
• Cons: Performance can be a bottleneck on older Android devices or with large blur radii. Relies on a native overlay approach that can have limitations and occasional visual artifacts. Customization is limited to the props provided.

Method 2: React Native Skia (The Modern Powerhouse)

Powered by Google's 2D graphics library Skia, which also powers Chrome and Android itself, @shopify/react-native-skia is a game-changer. It provides a drawing surface within React Native where you can create incredibly performant and complex visual effects, including high-quality blurs.

How to Implement It

React Native Skia offers several ways to achieve a blur. The <BackdropBlur> component is the most direct equivalent to a blur view.

First, install the library:

npm install @shopify/react-native-skia

Here's how you can use BackdropBlur to create a frosted glass effect:

import { Canvas, Fill, BackdropBlur, RoundedRect } from "@shopify/react-native-skia";
import { View, Text, StyleSheet, ImageBackground } from 'react-native';

const SkiaBlurComponent = () => (
  <ImageBackground source={require('./background.jpg')} style={styles.container}>
    <View style={styles.contentWrapper}>
      <Canvas style={styles.canvas}>
        <Fill color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2)" /> {/* Optional overlay color */}
        <BackdropBlur
          blur={15} // The blur radius
          clip={{ x: 0, y: 0, width: 250, height: 150, rx: 20 }} // Defines the blurred area
        >
          {/* This color tint is applied on top of the blurred content */}
          <Fill color="rgba(100, 100, 100, 0.2)" />
        </BackdropBlur>
      </Canvas>
      <Text style={styles.text}>Hello Skia</Text>
    </View>
  </ImageBackground>
);

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: { flex: 1, justifyContent: 'center', alignItems: 'center' },
  contentWrapper: { justifyContent: 'center', alignItems: 'center' },
  canvas: { width: 250, height: 150 },
  text: { position: 'absolute', fontSize: 24, fontWeight: 'bold', color: 'white' }
});

Pros & Cons

• Pros: Exceptional performance, even with high blur radii. Cross-platform consistency. Unlocks a huge range of other graphical capabilities (shaders, gradients, paths). Actively developed and supported by Shopify.
• Cons: Can have a steeper learning curve than a simple component. Adds a significant dependency to your project. The mental model shifts from standard React Native views to a canvas-based drawing paradigm.

Method 3: Custom Native Module (The Ultimate Control)

For projects with extreme performance requirements or unique needs, dropping down to the native level is the ultimate solution. This involves writing your own native Android View and exposing it to your JavaScript code. You would typically use a modern, performant native Android blur library like com.github.Dimezis:BlurView or Android's built-in RenderEffect.createBlurEffect (API 31+).

Conceptual Steps

1. Create a Native View Manager: In Java or Kotlin, create a class that extends SimpleViewManager.
2. Instantiate the Native View: In the createViewInstance method, create an instance of a native blurring view (e.g., BlurView from a third-party library).
3. Bridge the Props: Use @ReactProp annotations to expose props like blurRadius from your JavaScript component to the native view.
4. Package and Register: Create a ReactPackage to register your new native module with React Native.
5. Create the React Component: In JavaScript, use requireNativeComponent to create a React component that maps to your native view.

Pros & Cons

• Pros: Unmatched performance and control. You can optimize exactly for your use case and device targets. No reliance on third-party JavaScript abstractions.
• Cons: High complexity. Requires native Android development skills (Java/Kotlin and Android Studio). Increases maintenance overhead, as you now own the native code. Can be brittle across React Native upgrades.

Head-to-Head: Blur Method Comparison

Performance Considerations & Best Practices

Regardless of the method you choose, follow these tips to ensure a smooth experience:

• Limit the Blur Area: The larger the blurred surface, the more work the GPU has to do. Keep your blur views as small as possible.
• Avoid Animating Blur Radius: Animating the `blurAmount` or `blurRadius` property is extremely expensive as it forces the blur to be recalculated on every frame. Instead, animate the opacity of the blur view for a fade-in/fade-out effect.
• Use Downsampling: For libraries that support it (like `@react-native-community/blur`'s `downsampleFactor`), increasing this value will drastically improve performance at the cost of some blur quality. It reduces the resolution of the image before blurring.
• Test on Real Devices: Performance on a high-end simulator or flagship phone can be misleading. Always test your blur effects on low-to-mid-range Android devices to find and fix performance bottlenecks.
• Consider Expo: If you're using Expo, React Native Skia is fully supported and often the easiest path to high-performance graphics. The community blur view may require a custom development client. A custom native module is not compatible with the Expo Go app.

Conclusion: Choosing Your Blur Strategy

The dark days of struggling with blur on React Native Android are over. For 2025, you have excellent options tailored to different needs.

If you need a quick and easy solution for a standard application, @react-native-community/blur is still a viable and reliable choice. For anyone building a modern, visually rich application where performance and quality are paramount, React Native Skia is the clear winner and the future-proof path. For those with specialized needs and the native expertise to match, a Custom Native Module offers unparalleled control.

By understanding the trade-offs, you can confidently choose the right tool and master the blur effect to create stunning, modern interfaces on Android.