I finished adding a small tab navigation ui to my app. It took a while to figure out how to link tamagui with expo, but after a few tutorials online (very elusive) I finally found out how to set it up. Its as simple as running npx create-expo-app@latest my-app and then npm install tamagui @tamagui/config. I actually switched to using expo-stack, but then ultimately changed a lot of files.

I also learned how to make my own components, creating a felt-like texture, and then adding a ‘raised’ element that I could use. There is a huge issue though, which has plagued me for the past 2ish hours: expo go, or at least within my speicific app, won’t render boxshadows that are out-set. You can see in the screenshot that the corners are the only part that are rendered. Using online Snack + Expo Go demo yields a working version, but it won’t work on mine right now.

Tomorrow ill try prebuilding and see if expo-go is the issue. Maybe a true apk will solve it. But thats a temporary fix, as I need fast changes to rapidly learn and iterate.

EDIT: Holy moly I did it. Sometimes a nap is the solution. The issue is that my felt custom element didn’t have the corner radius and overflow attributes set. For some reason–I assume because I’m tiling the bg–it prevented the boxshadow from rendering.