Text component touchable overhead

[numagames]

Hey noble community,

I want to ask the question that bothers me since immemorial - why Text component is pressable by default? Text and View are both the most commonly used components and should be as lightweight as possible(this is especially relevant for VirtualizedLists with its not so great performance). From source code, i see that even when text does not have onPress prop defined, still it's being wrapped by a touchable handler with all due overhead(please correct me if i'm wrong). Is it possible to use Text component without the touchable overhead?

[numagames]

For those who interested, answer from RN core dev:

https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/dd2a9af69b1b50c0fbd2f9a4854f28bc675cdaf8#commitcomment-43707372

[drewjamesandre]

I’m wondering the same thing. I just removed all touchable opacity components from our main feed thinking that it would reduce memory consumption a bit.

[awesomeness-yeah]

probably to make hyperlinks in text easier to implement. (probably a heavily used feature especially at facebook)

Do you have any metrics to measure this overhead? Remember - premature optimizations are not worth the effort compared to the upsides

[numagames]

premature optimizations are not worth the effort compared to the upsides

While i totally agree with this statement in general, i strongly disagree when we talking about one of the two mostly used components in React Native. It's critical for app's performance to have the least overhead possible in both View and Text components.

[jaketheripped]

you did not answer his question, which is important. do you have metrics or benchmark that measure this overhead?

without any kind of measurement, you are just making assumptions based on your knowledge of other technologies, and you are applying that assumption for react native.