React useTransition Hook: How to Use it for Smooth Transitions

The React useTransition hook is a powerful tool for animating components in a performant way. In this blog post, we’ll go over a real-world example of how to use the useTransition hook to create smooth transitions between different states of a component.

First, let’s go over the basic usage of the useTransition hook. It takes two arguments: the first is the state that you want to transition from, and the second is an object that defines the transition. The object should include a key called “from” and a key called “enter”, which define the styles of the element before and after the transition.

In our example, we’ll be creating a simple toggle button that switches between two different states: “on” and “off”. The button will have a different background color depending on its state, and we’ll use the useTransition hook to smoothly transition between the two colors.

First, we’ll set up our state and the useTransition hook. We’ll use the useState hook to create a state variable called “isOn” that keeps track of whether the button is in the “on” or “off” state. Then, we’ll use the useTransition hook to create a transition between the two states.

const [isOn, setIsOn] = useState(false);
const transition = useTransition(isOn, {
  from: { background: "white" },
  enter: { background: "blue" },
});

Next, we’ll create a function that will be called when the button is clicked. This function will toggle the “isOn” state variable and trigger the transition.

const handleClick = () => {
  setIsOn(!isOn);
};

Finally, we’ll render the button and pass the transition styles to it. We’ll also pass the handleClick function as the onClick prop of the button.

return (
  <div>
    <button
      style={transition.item.props}
      onClick={handleClick}
    >
      {isOn ? "On" : "Off"}
    </button>
  </div>
);

And that’s it! With just a few lines of code, we’ve created a smooth transition between two different states of a component using the React useTransition hook.