react-media vs react-device-detect vs react-responsive vs react-responsive-carousel
Responsive Design Libraries for React
react-mediareact-device-detectreact-responsivereact-responsive-carouselSimilar Packages:

Responsive Design Libraries for React

These libraries are designed to enhance the responsiveness of React applications by detecting device types, managing media queries, and providing responsive components. They help developers create user interfaces that adapt seamlessly to different screen sizes and orientations, improving user experience across devices.

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react-media117,6692,424-87 years agoMIT
react-device-detect02,92649.6 kB733 years agoMIT
react-responsive07,16856.6 kB5a year agoMIT
react-responsive-carousel02,679188 kB8-MIT

Feature Comparison: react-media vs react-device-detect vs react-responsive vs react-responsive-carousel

Device Detection

  • react-device-detect:

    react-device-detect provides a simple API to detect the user's device type, including mobile, tablet, and desktop. It allows developers to conditionally render components based on the detected device, enabling tailored user experiences.

Media Queries

  • react-media:

    react-media offers a straightforward way to implement media queries directly in your React components. It allows you to define breakpoints and render different components or styles based on the current viewport size, enhancing responsiveness without relying on CSS.

Responsive Components

  • react-responsive:

    react-responsive allows you to create responsive components easily by using media query props. It enables you to define how components should behave at different screen sizes, making it easier to manage responsive layouts within your application.

Carousel Functionality

  • react-responsive-carousel:

    react-responsive-carousel provides a fully responsive carousel component that supports touch gestures and various customization options. It is designed to work seamlessly across devices, ensuring that the carousel adapts to different screen sizes and orientations.

Ease of Use

  • react-media:

    react-media is lightweight and straightforward, making it easy for developers to implement media queries without additional complexity.

  • react-device-detect:

    react-device-detect is easy to integrate and requires minimal setup, making it suitable for developers who need quick device detection without extensive configuration.

  • react-responsive:

    react-responsive is user-friendly and integrates well with existing React components, allowing for a smooth development experience.

  • react-responsive-carousel:

    react-responsive-carousel is simple to use and provides a range of props for customization, making it easy to implement a responsive carousel in your project.

How to Choose: react-media vs react-device-detect vs react-responsive vs react-responsive-carousel

  • react-media:

    Select react-media if you want a lightweight solution for handling media queries in your React components. It allows for responsive design without the need for CSS media queries, making it ideal for projects where you want to keep JavaScript and CSS concerns separate.

  • react-device-detect:

    Choose react-device-detect if you need to conditionally render components based on the user's device type, such as mobile, tablet, or desktop. It's particularly useful for applications that require specific functionality or layout adjustments depending on the device.

  • react-responsive:

    Opt for react-responsive if you need a comprehensive solution for media queries that integrates well with your React components. It provides a declarative way to manage responsive design and is suitable for applications that require complex responsive layouts.

  • react-responsive-carousel:

    Use react-responsive-carousel if you are looking for a responsive carousel component that works seamlessly with React. It's perfect for applications that need to display images or content in a slider format while ensuring responsiveness across devices.

README for react-media

react-media Travis npm package

react-media is a CSS media query component for React.

A <Media> component listens for matches to a CSS media query and renders stuff based on whether the query matches or not.

Installation

Using npm:

$ npm install --save react-media

Then, use as you would anything else:

// using ES modules
import Media from 'react-media';

// using CommonJS modules
var Media = require('react-media');

The UMD build is also available on unpkg:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/react-media"></script>

You can find the library on window.ReactMedia.

Basic usage

queries

Render a <Media> component with a queries prop whose value is an object, where each value is a valid CSS media query. The children prop should be a function whose argument will be an object with the same keys as your queries object, and whose values are booleans indicating whether each query matches.

import React, { Fragment } from 'react';
import Media from 'react-media';

class App extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <Media queries={{
          small: "(max-width: 599px)",
          medium: "(min-width: 600px) and (max-width: 1199px)",
          large: "(min-width: 1200px)"
        }}>
          {matches => (
            <Fragment>
              {matches.small && <p>I am small!</p>}
              {matches.medium && <p>I am medium!</p>}
              {matches.large && <p>I am large!</p>}
            </Fragment>
          )}
        </Media>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

query

Alternatively, if you only need to match against a single media query, the query prop provides a less-verbose approach. More documentation about the difference betwen query and queries can be found below.

import React, { Fragment } from 'react';
import Media from 'react-media';

class App extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <Media query="(max-width: 599px)" render={() =>
          (
            <p>I am small!</p>
          )}
        />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

query vs queries

The queries prop was added to allow for multiple media queries to be matched without excessive nesting or other workarounds. The query prop was retained out of recognition that a single query covers many use cases, and there is already a lot of usage that would be a pain to migrate.

The salient points:

  • You cannot use them together: if you do, the component will throw an error. This is to avoid confusion around precedence.
  • The render methods differ slightly: for the queries prop, the render and child JSX methods will render if at least one of the given queries is matched. The query prop renders if the given query matches.

queries

In addition to passing a valid media query string, the queries prop will also accept an object of objects whose forms are similar to React's built-in support for inline style objects in e.g. <div style>. These objects are converted to CSS media queries via json2mq.

import React from 'react';
import Media from 'react-media';

class App extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <h1>These two Media components are equivalent</h1>

        <Media queries={{ small: { maxWidth: 599 } }}>
          {matches =>
            matches.small ? (
              <p>The document is less than 600px wide.</p>
            ) : (
              <p>The document is at least 600px wide.</p>
            )
          }
        </Media>

        <Media queries={{ small: "(max-width: 599px)" }}>
          {matches =>
            matches.small ? (
              <p>The document is less than 600px wide.</p>
            ) : (
              <p>The document is at least 600px wide.</p>
            )
          }
        </Media>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

Keys of media query objects are camel-cased and numeric values automatically get the px suffix. See the json2mq docs for more examples of queries you can construct using objects.

Render props

There are three props which allow you to render your content. They each serve a subtly different purpose.

propdescriptionexample
renderOnly invoked when at least one of the queries matches. This is a nice shorthand if you only want to render something for a matching query.<Media queries={{ foo: ... }} render={() => <p>I matched!</p>} />
children (function)Receives an object of booleans whose keys are the same as the queries prop, indicating whether each media query matched. Use this prop if you need to render different output for each of specified queries.<Media queries={{ foo: ... }}>{matches => matches.foo ? <p>I matched!</p> : <p>I didn't match</p>}</Media>
children (react element)If you render a regular React element within <Media>, it will render that element when at least one of the queries matches. This method serves the same purpose as the render prop, however, you'll create component instances regardless of whether the queries match or not. Hence, using the render prop is preferred (more info).<Media queries={{ ... }}><p>I matched!</p></Media>

query

In addition to passing a valid media query string, the query prop will also accept an object, similar to React's built-in support for inline style objects in e.g. <div style>. These objects are converted to CSS media queries via json2mq.

import React from 'react';
import Media from 'react-media';

class App extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <h1>These two Media components are equivalent</h1>

        <Media query={{ maxWidth: 599 }}>
          {matches =>
            matches ? (
              <p>The document is less than 600px wide.</p>
            ) : (
              <p>The document is at least 600px wide.</p>
            )
          }
        </Media>

        <Media query="(max-width: 599px)">
          {matches =>
            matches ? (
              <p>The document is less than 600px wide.</p>
            ) : (
              <p>The document is at least 600px wide.</p>
            )
          }
        </Media>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

Keys of media query objects are camel-cased and numeric values automatically get the px suffix. See the json2mq docs for more examples of queries you can construct using objects.

Render props

There are three props which allow you to render your content. They each serve a subtly different purpose.

propdescriptionexample
renderOnly invoked when the query matches. This is a nice shorthand if you only want to render something for a matching query.<Media query="..." render={() => <p>I matched!</p>} />
children (function)Receives a single boolean element, indicating whether the media query matched. Use this prop if you need to render something when the query doesn't match.<Media query="...">{matches => matches ? <p>I matched!</p> : <p>I didn't match</p>}</Media>
children (react element)If you render a regular React element within <Media>, it will render that element when the query matches. This method serves the same purpose as the render prop, however, you'll create component instances regardless of whether the query matches or not. Hence, using the render prop is preferred (more info).<Media query="..."><p>I matched!</p></Media>

onChange

You can specify an optional onChange prop, which is a callback function that will be invoked when the status of the media queries changes. This can be useful for triggering side effects, independent of the render lifecycle.

import React from 'react';
import Media from 'react-media';

class App extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <Media
          query={{ small: "(max-width: 599px)" }}
          onChange={matches =>
            matches.small
              ? alert('The document is less than 600px wide.')
              : alert('The document is at least 600px wide.')
          }
        />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

Server-side rendering (SSR)

If you render a <Media> component on the server, it will match by default. You can override the default behavior by setting the defaultMatches prop.

When rendering on the server you can use the defaultMatches prop to set the initial state on the server to match whatever you think it will be on the client. You can detect the user's device by analyzing the user-agent string from the HTTP request in your server-side rendering code.

initialState = {
  device: 'mobile' // add your own guessing logic here, based on user-agent for example
};

<div>
  <Media
    queries={{ medium: "(max-width: 500px)" }}
    defaultMatches={{ medium: state.device === 'mobile' }}
    render={() => <Text>Render me below medium breakpoint.</Text>}
  />

  <Media
    queries={{ medium: "(min-width: 501px)" }}
    defaultMatches={{ medium: state.device === 'desktop' }}
    render={() => <Text>Render me above medium breakpoint.</Text>}
  />
</div>;

targetWindow

An optional targetWindow prop can be specified if you want the queries to be evaluated against a different window object than the one the code is running in. This can be useful if you are rendering part of your component tree to an iframe or a popup window. See this PR thread for context.

About

react-media is developed and maintained by React Training. If you're interested in learning more about what React can do for your company, please get in touch!