[iOS] TextInput `autoFocus` called in `didMoveToWindow` causing transition glitches with UIKit

[hannojg]

Description

In react-native iOS apps its very common to have a setup where screens are represented as individual UIViewControllers. The most common case is when using:

• react-native-screens

There is a problem is with transitions between two UIViewController when the new screen contains a <TextInput autoFocus={true} />:

reproducing_input_issue.mov

There are three issues with the transition:

• (Not very well visible in the video, but) there is a hang before the screen transition starts
• The transition doesn't progress forward all the way. At one point it seems like its slightly reset back, before moving forward again
• The keyboard changes its color weirdly from dark to light (i also noticed that's not visible in the video, you can see on the second video below)

Now, your first reaction might be that this is a bug with react-native-screens. It's not, let me explain.
The "problem" is that react-native TextInput implementation calls becomeFirstResponder in didMoveToWindow:

react-native/packages/react-native/React/Fabric/Mounting/ComponentViews/TextInput/RCTTextInputComponentView.mm

Lines 120 to 127 in fb0d28c

	- (void)didMoveToWindow
	{
	[super didMoveToWindow];
	if (self.window && !_didMoveToWindow) {
	const auto &props = static_cast<const TextInputProps &>(*_props);
	if (props.autoFocus) {
	[_backedTextInputView becomeFirstResponder];

If you try the same in a native iOS app, you can reproduce the issue! I created a sample native iOS app and tried this (the second transition in the recording is actually fine, so this is a bit of a race condition thing it seems):

ScreenRecording_04-23-2026.13-38-15_1.MP4

Code can be found here

It seems like this was added back in 2019/2020 to react-native, and back then it seemed to be the correct way to handle the transition correctly (ironically without that code it was causing the same issue i am reporting now)

• Remove requestAnimationFrame when focusing input on mount #27217
• Implement TextInput autoFocus natively on iOS #27803

And it seems like this was working fine, until iOS 16 came out. Since then new issue reports appeared on react-native-screens about this:

• [Ios] app lags/stutters while navigating to a new screen with auto focused text input software-mansion/react-native-screens#1637

And in that sense, this seems to me a bit also like an iOS regression. Now, is this a bug we should just delegate to apple to fix in iOS?
I was contemplating about that, and I think it would be good to raise the issue, but at the same time it seems like its not 100% apple's fault.

After some research and talking to some iOS developers they all told me that you'd usually request focus for an input in viewDidAppear, not in didMoveToWindow. In didMoveToWindow we don't know if there is a transition is still in progress, where viewDidAppear seems to be the place we can be absolutely sure our view is present, and the VC fully appeared.
This does change the style of the transition a bit, as you will see the screen transition finish and only then the keyboard appears [but as a pay off it's never buggy]:

viewDidAppear.MP4

I checked all native iOS apps on my phone, including some of apple's, and it seems like all open the keyboard after the VC transition finished. I vaguely recall that when iOS 16 came out people were complaining that apple "broke the keyboard".

I will open the discussion on how we may want to address in the comments below.

Steps to reproduce

1. Clone the reproducer
2. Run it, click the button

React Native Version

0.85.2

Affected Platforms

Runtime - iOS

Output of npx @react-native-community/cli info

info Fetching system and libraries information...
System:
  OS: macOS 26.4.1
  CPU: (16) arm64 Apple M4 Max
  Memory: 117.55 MB / 48.00 GB
  Shell:
    version: "5.9"
    path: /bin/zsh
Binaries:
  Node:
    version: 22.14.0
    path: /nix/store/04fc23dsflkxl4s9p6lkigia1hq3vjp2-nodejs-22.14.0/bin/node
  Yarn:
    version: 1.22.22
    path: /Users/hannogoedecke/.yarn/bin/yarn
  npm:
    version: 10.9.2
    path: /nix/store/04fc23dsflkxl4s9p6lkigia1hq3vjp2-nodejs-22.14.0/bin/npm
  Watchman:
    version: 2024.03.11.00
    path: /Users/hannogoedecke/.nix-profile/bin/watchman
Managers:
  CocoaPods:
    version: 1.15.2
    path: /Users/hannogoedecke/.nix-profile/bin/pod
SDKs:
  iOS SDK:
    Platforms:
      - DriverKit 25.2
      - iOS 26.2
      - macOS 26.2
      - tvOS 26.2
      - visionOS 26.2
      - watchOS 26.2
  Android SDK: Not Found
IDEs:
  Android Studio: 2025.3 AI-253.30387.90.2532.14935130
  Xcode:
    version: 26.2/17C52
    path: /usr/bin/xcodebuild
Languages:
  Java: Not Found
  Ruby:
    version: 3.4.2
    path: /Users/hannogoedecke/.rbenv/shims/ruby
npmPackages:
  "@react-native-community/cli":
    installed: 20.1.0
    wanted: 20.1.0
  react:
    installed: 19.2.3
    wanted: 19.2.3
  react-native:
    installed: 0.85.2
    wanted: 0.85.2
  react-native-macos: Not Found
npmGlobalPackages:
  "*react-native*": Not Found
Android:
  hermesEnabled: true
  newArchEnabled: true
iOS:
  hermesEnabled: true
  newArchEnabled: true

Stacktrace or Logs

No logs are relevant for this issue

MANDATORY Reproducer

https://github.com/hannojg/ios-textinput-autofocus-transition-uikit-issues

Screenshots and Videos

No response

[hannojg]

Although this might be an iOS 16+ quirk, i think its important to address. Imagine you're a new react-native developer, put a <TextInput autoFocus={true} /> view on your screen and that's the experience you're getting 😅 (also i have seen multiple RN apps out in production suffering from that problem. Right now thats my Nr.1 way of telling if an app is likely react native or not)

I think the only way to properly address that is to move the becomeFirstResponder/focus for the input to viewDidAppear. I see use cases as dynamically rendering <TextInput autoFocus /> where this could break, but I think that could be handled.

The tricky part to me seems to get the viewDidAppear event to the text input view instance.
I think my game plan to address this would roughly look like this:

1. (link) A PR in RN which adds a "ViewController appearance listener" pattern into which VC & views can opt-in to
2. (link) A PR in which the RN root controller by default opts into this pattern (doesn't do any harm as its listener based)
3. (link) A feature flag in react-native, something like iosEnableExperimentalAutoFocusImplementation, which we maybe add to the experimental level?
4. (link) A PR which, in case of the feature flag being active, changes the becomeFirstResponder call away from didMoveToWindow to viewDidAppear by adding a listener (for that PR (1) has to land first)
5. A PR in react-native screens to also opt into this pattern with their VCs

How do you feel about that?
Users could then opt into that feature flag to fix this issue and this can be tested properly.
My only concern is if this becomes the default implementation I assume meta internally would need to do work on their UIViewControllers to also opt into that pattern (otherwise autoFocus could break). This would be as simple as either extending from a RCTViewController class, or just implementing the protocol, which could be something like:

@interface RCTViewController : UIViewController
@end

@implementation RCTViewController

- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
  [super viewDidAppear:animated];
  [self reactNotifyViewControllerDidAppear:animated];
}

@end

(Otherwise I guess we could do runtime checks if the parent UIViewController implements the protocol, if it does add a listener to viewDidAppear, otherwise, fallback to didMoveToWindow ? This could make the feature flag approach step obsolete too!)