React Native

Installation

Our React Native enables you to integrate PostHog with your React Native project. For React Native projects built with Expo, there are no mobile native dependencies outside of supported Expo packages.

To install, add the posthog-react-native package to your project as well as the required peer dependencies.

Expo apps

npx expo install posthog-react-native expo-file-system expo-application expo-device expo-localization

React Native apps

yarn add posthog-react-native @react-native-async-storage/async-storage react-native-device-info react-native-localize
# or
npm i -s posthog-react-native @react-native-async-storage/async-storage react-native-device-info react-native-localize

React Native Web and macOS

If you're using React Native Web or React Native macOS, do not use the expo-file-system package since the Web and macOS targets aren't supported, use the @react-native-async-storage/async-storage package instead.

Configuration

With the PosthogProvider

The recommended way to set up PostHog for React Native is to use the PostHogProvider. This utilizes the Context API to pass the PostHog client around, enable autocapture, and ensure that the queue is flushed at the right time.

To set up PostHogProvider, add it to your App.js or App.ts file:

// App.(js|ts)
import { usePostHog, PostHogProvider } from 'posthog-react-native'
...

export function MyApp() {
    return (
        <PostHogProvider apiKey="<ph_project_api_key>" options={{
            // usually 'https://us.i.posthog.com' or 'https://eu.i.posthog.com'
            host: 'https://us.i.posthog.com', 
        }}>
            <MyComponent />
        </PostHogProvider>
    )
}

Then you can access PostHog using the usePostHog() hook:

const MyComponent = () => {
    const posthog = usePostHog()

    useEffect(() => {
        posthog.capture("event_name")
    }, [posthog])
}

Without the PosthogProvider

If you prefer not to use the provider, you can initialize PostHog in its own file and import the instance from there:

import PostHog from 'posthog-react-native'

export const posthog = new PostHog('<ph_project_api_key>', {
  // usually 'https://us.i.posthog.com' or 'https://eu.i.posthog.com'  
  host: 'https://us.i.posthog.com' 
})

Then you can access PostHog by importing your instance:

import { posthog } from './posthog'

export function MyApp1() {
    useEffect(async () => {
        posthog.capture('event_name')
    }, [posthog])

    return <View>Your app code</View>
}

You can even use this instance with the PostHogProvider:

import { posthog } from './posthog'

export function MyApp() {
  return <PostHogProvider client={posthog}>{/* Your app code */}</PostHogProvider>
}

Configuration options

You can further customize how PostHog works through its configuration on initialization.

Capturing events

You can send custom events using capture:

posthog.capture('user_signed_up')

Tip: We recommend using a [object] [verb] format for your event names, where [object] is the entity that the behavior relates to, and [verb] is the behavior itself. For example, project created, user signed up, or invite sent.

Setting event properties

Optionally, you can include additional information with the event by including a properties object:

posthog.capture('user_signed_up', {
    login_type: "email",
    is_free_trial: true
})

Capturing screen views

With @react-navigation/native and autocapture:

When using @react-navigation/native, screen tracking is automatically captured if the autocapture property is used in the PostHogProvider:

It is important that the PostHogProvider is configured as a child of the NavigationContainer:

// App.(js|ts)

import { PostHogProvider } from 'posthog-react-native'
import { NavigationContainer } from '@react-navigation/native'

export function App() {
    return (
        <NavigationContainer>
            <PostHogProvider apiKey="<ph_project_api_key>" autocapture>
                {/* Rest of app */}
            </PostHogProvider>
        </NavigationContainer>
    )
}

With react-native-navigation and autocapture:

First, simplify the wrapping of your screens with a shared PostHogProvider:

import PostHog, { PostHogProvider } from 'posthog-react-native'
import { Navigation } from 'react-native-navigation';

export const posthog = new PostHog('<ph_project_api_key>');

export const SharedPostHogProvider = (props: any) => {
  return (
    <PostHogProvider client={posthog} autocapture={{
      captureScreens: false, // Screen events are handled differently for react-native-navigation
      captureTouches: true,
    }}>
      {props.children}
    </PostHogProvider>
  );
};

Then, every screen needs to be wrapped with this provider if you want to capture touches or use the usePostHog() hook

export const MyScreen = () => {
  return (
    <SharedPostHogProvider>
      <View>
        ...
      </View>
    </SharedPostHogProvider>
  );
};

Navigation.registerComponent('Screen', () => MyScreen);

Navigation.events().registerAppLaunchedListener(async () => {
  posthog.initReactNativeNavigation({
    navigation: {
      // (Optional) Set the name based on the route. Defaults to the route name.
      routeToName: (name, properties) => name,
      // (Optional) Tracks all passProps as properties. Defaults to undefined
      routeToProperties: (name, properties) => properties,
    },
    captureScreens: true,
  });
});

Manually capturing screen capture events

If you prefer not to use autocapture, you can manually capture screen views by calling posthog.screen(). This function requires a name. You may also pass in an optional properties object.

posthog.screen('dashboard', {
    background: 'blue',
    hero: 'superhog',
})

Autocapture

PostHog autocapture can automatically track the following events for you:

• Application Opened - when the app is opened from a closed state
• Application Became Active - when the app comes to the foreground (e.g. from the app switcher)
• Application Backgrounded - when the app is sent to the background by the user
• Application Installed - when the app is installed.
• Application Updated - when the app is updated.
• $screen - when the user navigates (if using @react-navigation/native or react-native-navigation)
• $autocapture - touch events when the user interacts with the screen

With autocapture, all touch events for children of PosthogProvider are tracked, capturing a snapshot of the view hierarchy at that point. This enables you to create insights in PostHog without having to add custom events.

PostHog will try to generate a sensible name for the touched element based on the React component displayName or name. If you prefer, you can set your own name using the ph-label prop:

<View ph-label="my-special-label"></View>

Autocapture configuration

<PostHogProvider apiKey="<ph_project_api_key>" autocapture={{
    captureTouches: true,
    captureScreens: true, 
    ignoreLabels: [], // Any labels here will be ignored from the stack in touch events
    customLabelProp: "ph-label",
    noCaptureProp: "ph-no-capture",
    propsToCapture: ["testID"], // Limit which props are captured. By default, identifiers and text content are captured.

    navigation: {
        // By default, only the screen name is tracked but it is possible to track the
        // params or modify the name by intercepting the autocapture like so
        routeToName: (name, params) => {
            if (params.id) return `${name}/${params.id}`
            return name
        },
        routeToProperties: (name, params) => {
            if (name === "SensitiveScreen") return undefined
            return params
        },
    }
}}>
    ...
</PostHogProvider>

Preventing sensitive data capture

If there are elements you don't want to be captured, you can add the ph-no-capture property. If this property is found anywhere in the view hierarchy, the entire touch event is ignored:

<View ph-no-capture>Sensitive view here</View>

Identifying users

We highly recommend reading our section on Identifying users to better understand how to correctly use this method.

Using identify, you can associate events with specific users. This enables you to gain full insights as to how they're using your product across different sessions, devices, and platforms.

An identify call has the following arguments:

• distinctId: Required. A unique identifier for your user. Typically either their email or database ID.
• properties: Optional. A dictionary with key:value pairs to set the person properties

posthog.identify('distinctID', 
  { // ($set):
      email: 'user@posthog.com',
      name: 'My Name'
  }
)

$set_once works just like $set, except that it will only set the property if the user doesn't already have that property set. See the difference between $set and $set_once

posthog.identify('distinctID',
  {
    $set: {
        email: 'user@posthog.com',
        name: 'My Name'
    },
    $set_once: {
        date_of_first_log_in: '2024-03-01'
    }
  }
)

You should call identify as soon as you're able to. Typically, this is after your user logs in. This ensures that events sent during your user's sessions are correctly associated with them.

When you call identify, all previously tracked anonymous events will be linked to the user.

Get the current user's distinct ID

You may find it helpful to get the current user's distinct ID. For example, to check whether you've already called identify for a user or not.

To do this, call posthog.get_distinct_id(). This returns either the ID automatically generated by PostHog or the ID that has been passed by a call to identify().

Alias

Sometimes, you want to assign multiple distinct IDs to a single user. This is helpful when your primary distinct ID is inaccessible. For example, if a distinct ID used on the frontend is not available in your backend.

In this case, you can use alias to assign another distinct ID to the same user.

// Sets alias for current user
posthog.alias('distinct_id')

We strongly recommend reading our docs on alias to best understand how to correctly use this method.

Setting person properties

Person properties enable you to capture, manage, and analyze specific data about a user. You can use them to create filters or cohorts, which can then be used in insights, feature flags, and more.

To set a user's properties, include the $set or $set_once property when capturing any event:

$set

posthog.capture('some_event', { $set: { userProperty: 'value' } })

$set_once

$set_once works just like $set, except it only sets the property if the user doesn't already have that property set.

posthog.capture('some_event', { $set_once: { userProperty: 'value' } })

Super properties

Super properties are properties associated with events that are set once and then sent with every capture call, be it a $screen, an autocaptured touch, or anything else.

They are set using posthog.register, which takes a properties object as a parameter, and they persist across sessions.

For example:

posthog.register({
    'icecream pref': 'vanilla',
    team_id: 22,
})

The call above ensures that every event sent by the user will include "icecream pref": "vanilla" and "team_id": 22. This way, if you filtered events by property using icecream_pref = vanilla, it would display all events captured on that user after the posthog.register call, since they all include the specified Super Property.

This does not set the user's properties. This only sets the properties for their events. To store person properties, see the setting person properties section.

Removing stored super properties

Super Properties are persisted across sessions so you have to explicitly remove them if they are no longer relevant. In order to stop sending a Super Property with events, you can use posthog.unregister, like so:

posthog.unregister('icecream pref'),

This will remove the super property and subsequent events will not include it.

If you are doing this as part of a user logging out you can instead simply posthog.reset() which takes care of clearing all stored Super Properties and more.

Opt out of data capture

You can completely opt-out users from data capture. To do this, there are two options:

1. Opt users out by default by setting opt_out_capturing_by_default to true in your PostHog config:

posthog.init('<ph_project_api_key>', {
    opt_out_capturing_by_default: true,
});

2. Opt users out on a per-person basis by calling opt_out_capturing():

posthog.opt_out_capturing()

Similarly, you can opt users in:

posthog.opt_in_capturing()

To check if a user is opted out:

posthog.has_opted_out_capturing()

Flush

You can set the number of events in the configuration that should queue before flushing. Setting this to 1 will send events immediately and will use more battery. This is set to 20 by default.

You can also configure the flush interval. By default we flush all events after 30 seconds, no matter how many events have gathered.

You can also manually flush the queue. If a flush is already in progress it returns a promise for the existing flush.

await posthog.flush()

Reset after logout

To reset the user's ID and anonymous ID, call reset. Usually you would do this right after the user logs out.

posthog.reset()

Opt in/out

By default, PostHog has tracking enabled unless it is forcefully disabled by default using the option { defaultOptIn: false }.

You can give your users the option to opt in or out by calling the relevant methods. Once these have been called they are persisted and will be respected until optIn/Out is called again or the reset function is called.

To opt in/out of tracking, use the following calls.

posthog.optedOut // See if a user has opted out
posthog.optIn() // opt in
posthog.optOut() // opt out

If you still wish capture these events but want to create a distinction between users and team in PostHog, you should look into Cohorts.

Feature Flags

PostHog's feature flags enable you to safely deploy and roll back new features as well as target specific users and groups with them.

There are two ways to implement feature flags in React Native:

1. Using hooks.
2. Loading the flag directly.

Method 1: Using hooks

Example 1: Boolean feature flags

import { useFeatureFlag } from 'posthog-react-native'

const MyComponent = () => {
    const booleanFlag = useFeatureFlag('key-for-your-boolean-flag')

    if (booleanFlag === undefined) {
        // the response is undefined if the flags are being loaded
        return null
    }

    // Optional use the 'useFeatureFlagWithPayload' hook for fetching the feature flag payload

    return booleanFlag ? <Text>Testing feature 😄</Text> : <Text>Not Testing feature 😢</Text>
}

Example 2: Multivariate feature flags

import { useFeatureFlag } from 'posthog-react-native'

const MyComponent = () => {
    const multiVariantFeature = useFeatureFlag('key-for-your-multivariate-flag')

    if (multiVariantFeature === undefined) {
        // the response is undefined if the flags are being loaded
        return null
    } else if (multiVariantFeature === 'variant-name') { // replace 'variant-name' with the name of your variant
      // Do something
    }

    // Optional use the 'useFeatureFlagWithPayload' hook for fetching the feature flag payload

    return <div/>
}

Method 2: Loading the flag directly

// Defaults to undefined if not loaded yet or if there was a problem loading
posthog.isFeatureEnabled('key-for-your-boolean-flag')

// Defaults to undefined if not loaded yet or if there was a problem loading
posthog.getFeatureFlag('key-for-your-boolean-flag')

// Multivariant feature flags are returned as a string
posthog.getFeatureFlag('key-for-your-multivariate-flag')

// Optional fetch the payload returns 'JsonType' or undefined if not loaded yet or if there was a problem loading
posthog.getFeatureFlagPayload('key-for-your-multivariate-flag')

Reloading flags

PostHog loads feature flags when instantiated and refreshes whenever methods are called that affect the flag.

If want to manually trigger a refresh, you can call reloadFeatureFlagsAsync():

posthog.reloadFeatureFlagsAsync().then((refreshedFlags) => console.log(refreshedFlags))

Or when you want to trigger the reload, but don't care about the result:

posthog.reloadFeatureFlags()

Request timeout

You can configure the featureFlagsRequestTimeoutMs parameter when initializing your PostHog client to set a flag request timeout. This helps prevent your code from being blocked in the case when PostHog's servers are too slow to respond. By default, this is set at 10 seconds.

export const posthog = new PostHog('<ph_project_api_key>', {
  // usually 'https://us.i.posthog.com' or 'https://eu.i.posthog.com'  
  host: 'https://us.i.posthog.com',
  featureFlagsRequestTimeoutMs: 10000 // Time in milliseconds. Default is 10000 (10 seconds).
})

Error handling

When using the PostHog SDK, it's important to handle potential errors that may occur during feature flag operations. Here's an example of how to wrap PostHog SDK methods in an error handler:

function handleFeatureFlag(client, flagKey, distinctId) {
    try {
        const isEnabled = client.isFeatureEnabled(flagKey, distinctId);
        console.log(`Feature flag '${flagKey}' for user '${distinctId}' is ${isEnabled ? 'enabled' : 'disabled'}`);
        return isEnabled;
    } catch (error) {
        console.error(`Error fetching feature flag '${flagKey}': ${error.message}`);
        // Optionally, you can return a default value or throw the error
        // return false; // Default to disabled
        throw error;
    }
}

// Usage example
try {
    const flagEnabled = handleFeatureFlag(client, 'new-feature', 'user-123');
    if (flagEnabled) {
        // Implement new feature logic
    } else {
        // Implement old feature logic
    }
} catch (error) {
    // Handle the error at a higher level
    console.error('Feature flag check failed, using default behavior');
    // Implement fallback logic
}

Overriding server properties

Sometimes, you might want to evaluate feature flags using properties that haven't been ingested yet, or were set incorrectly earlier. You can do so by setting properties the flag depends on with these calls:

posthog.setPersonPropertiesForFlags({'property1': 'value', property2: 'value2'})

Note that these are set for the entire session. Successive calls are additive: all properties you set are combined together and sent for flag evaluation.

Whenever you set these properties, we also trigger a reload of feature flags to ensure we have the latest values. You can disable this by passing in the optional parameter for reloading:

posthog.setPersonPropertiesForFlags({'property1': 'value', property2: 'value2'}, false)

At any point, you can reset these properties by calling resetPersonPropertiesForFlags:

posthog.resetPersonPropertiesForFlags()

The same holds for group properties:

// set properties for a group
posthog.setGroupPropertiesForFlags({'company': {'property1': 'value', property2: 'value2'}})

// reset properties for all groups:
posthog.resetGroupPropertiesForFlags()

Note: You don't need to add the group names here, since these properties are automatically attached to the current group (set via posthog.group()). When you change the group, these properties are reset.

Automatic overrides

Whenever you call posthog.identify with person properties, we automatically add these properties to flag evaluation calls to help determine the correct flag values. The same is true for when you call posthog.group().

Default overridden properties

By default, we always override some properties based on the user IP address.

The list of properties that this overrides:

1. $geoip_city_name
2. $geoip_country_name
3. $geoip_country_code
4. $geoip_continent_name
5. $geoip_continent_code
6. $geoip_postal_code
7. $geoip_time_zone

This enables any geolocation-based flags to work without manually setting these properties.

Bootstrapping Flags

Since there is a delay between initializing PostHog and fetching feature flags, feature flags are not always available immediately. This makes them unusable if you want to do something like redirecting a user to a different page based on a feature flag.

To have your feature flags available immediately, you can initialize PostHog with precomputed values until it has had a chance to fetch them. This is called bootstrapping. After the SDK fetches feature flags from PostHog, it will use those flag values instead of bootstrapped ones.

For details on how to implement bootstrapping, see our bootstrapping guide.

Experiments (A/B tests)

Since experiments use feature flags, the code for running an experiment is very similar to the feature flags code:

// With the useFeatureFlag hook
import { useFeatureFlag } from 'posthog-react-native'

const MyComponent = () => {
    const variant = useFeatureFlag('experiment-feature-flag-key')

    if (variant === undefined) {
        // the response is undefined if the flags are being loaded
        return null
    }

    if (variant == 'variant-name') {
        // do something
    }
}

It's also possible to run experiments without using feature flags.

Group analytics

Group analytics allows you to associate the events for that person's session with a group (e.g. teams, organizations, etc.). Read the Group Analytics guide for more information.

Note: This is a paid feature and is not available on the open-source or free cloud plan. Learn more here.

• Associate the events for this session with a group

posthog.group('company', 'company_id_in_your_db')

posthog.capture('upgraded_plan') // this event is associated with company ID `company_id_in_your_db`

• Associate the events for this session with a group AND update the properties of that group

posthog.group('company', 'company_id_in_your_db', {
    name: 'Awesome Inc.',
    employees: 11,
})

The name is a special property which is used in the PostHog UI for the name of the group. If you don't specify a name property, the group ID will be used instead.

Session replay

To set up session replay in your project, all you need to do is install the React Native SDK and the Session replay plugin, then follow the instructions to enable Session Replay for React Native.

Surveys

To set up surveys, follow the additional installation instructions for React Native. Surveys launched with popover presentation are automatically shown to users matching the display conditions you set up.

Disabling for local development

You may want to disable PostHog when working locally or in a test environment. You can do this by setting the disable option to true when initializing PostHog. Helpfully this allows you to continue using usePostHog and safely calling it without anything actually happening.

// App.(js|ts)
import { usePostHog, PostHogProvider } from 'posthog-react-native'
...

export function MyApp() {
    return (
        <PostHogProvider apiKey="<ph_project_api_key>" options={{
            // Disable PostHog in development (or whatever other logic you choose)
            disabled: __DEV__,
        }}>
            <MyComponent />
        </PostHogProvider>
    )
}

const MyComponent = () => {
    const posthog = usePostHog()

    useEffect(() => {
        // Safe to call even when disabled!
        posthog.capture("mycomponent_loaded", { foo: "bar" })
    }, [])
}

Upgrading from V1, V2 to V3 or V3 to V4

V1 of this library utilised the underlying posthog-ios and posthog-android SDKs to do most of the work. Since the new version is written entirely in JS, using only Expo supported libraries, there are some changes to the way PostHog is configured as well as actually calling PostHog.

For iOS, the new React Native SDK will attempt to migrate the previously persisted data (such as distinctId and anonymousId) which should result in no unexpected changes to tracked data.

For Android, it is unfortunately not possible for persisted Android data to be loaded which means stored information such as the randomly generated anonymousId or the distinctId set by posthog.identify will not be present. For identified users, the simple workaround is to ensure that identify is called at least once when the app loads. For anonymous users there is unfortunately no straightforward workaround they will show up as new anonymous users in PostHog.

Events such as Application Installed and Application Updated that require previously persisted data were unable to be migrated, the side effect being that you may see much higher numbers for Application Installed events. This is due to the fact that there is no native way of detecting a real "install" and as such, we store a marker the first time the SDK loads and treat that as an install.

// DEPRECATED V1 Setup

import PostHog from 'posthog-react-native'

await PostHog.setup('<ph_project_api_key>', {
    // usually 'https://us.i.posthog.com' or 'https://eu.i.posthog.com'
    host: 'https://us.i.posthog.com',
    captureApplicationLifecycleEvents: false, // Replaced by 'PostHogProvider'
    captureDeepLinks: false, // No longer supported
    recordScreenViews: false, // Replaced by 'PostHogProvider' supporting @react-navigation/native
    flushInterval: 30, // Stays the same
    flushAt: 20, // Stays the same
    android: {...}, // No longer needed
    iOS: {...}, // No longer needed
})

PostHog.capture("foo")


// V2 Setup difference
import PostHog from 'posthog-react-native'

const posthog = await Posthog.initAsync('<ph_project_api_key>', {
    // usually 'https://us.i.posthog.com' or 'https://eu.i.posthog.com'
    host: 'https://us.i.posthog.com', 
    // Add any other options here.
})

// Use created instance rather than the PostHog class
posthog.capture("foo")

// V3 Setup difference
import PostHog from 'posthog-react-native'

const posthog = new PostHog('<ph_project_api_key>', {
    // usually 'https://us.i.posthog.com' or 'https://eu.i.posthog.com'
    host: 'https://us.i.posthog.com',
    // Add any other options here.
})

// Use created instance rather than the PostHog class
posthog.capture("foo")

// V4 Setup difference
import PostHog from 'posthog-react-native'

const posthog = new PostHog('<ph_project_api_key>', {
    // usually 'https://us.i.posthog.com' or 'https://eu.i.posthog.com'
    host: 'https://us.i.posthog.com',
    captureAppLifecycleEvents: true, // instead of `captureNativeAppLifecycleEvents` or `autocapture={{ captureLifecycleEvents: true }}`,
    // captureMode: 'json', // No longer supported
    // maskPhotoLibraryImages: true, // No longer supported
})

posthog.setPersonPropertiesForFlags(...) // instead of `personProperties`
posthog.setGroupPropertiesForFlags(...) // instead of `groupProperties`