Open-source React Native package
expo-native-compact-tabs
A native floating tab bar for Expo that keeps every tab visible when it goes compact: Apple's real Liquid Glass on iOS 26, with Swift and Kotlin fallbacks everywhere else.
Keeping every tab visible when the bar goes compact
On iOS 26, the system's own minimize behaviour keeps only the selected tab when the bar compacts. Custom React Native bars can copy the layout but not UIKit's Liquid Glass selection capsule, and a UITabBarController keeps the capsule but owns the minimize policy. I wanted the real material and a compact state that keeps every icon.
So I host a standalone UITabBar from Expo. UIKit still renders the Liquid Glass material, the selection capsule, hit testing and accessibility; React Native keeps the routes, the frame and the scroll policy. In the compact state only the labels disappear, and a shared controller compacts the bar after meaningful downward scrolling while ignoring rubber-band overscroll.
Older platforms get the same component with no platform checks in the app. On iOS 16.4 to 18 it switches to a solid floating pill with a Swift spring selection capsule; on Android a native Kotlin view renders the same geometry with drag selection and haptics. Neither claims to be Liquid Glass, because that material only exists on iOS 26.
It is MIT licensed and published on npm. Android support followed a day after the first release, and the README includes a setup prompt so coding agents can wire it into an existing Expo Router app.