June 25, 2026

Announcing gluestack-ui v5: Production-Ready Stable Release

Sanchit KumarBuilding gluestack-ui

We are thrilled to announce the stable release of gluestack-ui v5! Following a highly successful alpha/preview phase, v5 is now production-ready, featuring full support for Tailwind CSS v4, NativeWind v5, deep Expo integration, and a highly streamlined developer experience.

🚀 Native-First & Stable Performance

With the stable release of v5, we have made a major strategic shift to focus entirely on native mobile performance. By leaning heavily into the latest capabilities of NativeWind v5 (leveraging Tailwind CSS v4) and Expo Router, v5 brings lightning-fast execution and a premium developer experience to native platforms. As part of this native-first focus, we have simplified our library footprint:

Next.js Support Dropped: To focus 100% on building the absolute best UI tools for React Native and Expo, we have deprecated Next.js and universal monorepo adapters.

Expo Router First: Deep, stable integrations with Expo Router out-of-the-box.

🎨 Tailwind CSS v4 & CSS-First Theming

No more complex configuration files. Tailwind CSS v4 introduces a modern, CSS-first setup that eliminates

tailwind.config.js

entirely. Your design tokens now live directly in your CSS files using native

@layer theme

definitions. This provides a single, readable source of truth for colors, typography, border-radii, and dark mode overrides:

@layer theme {
  :root {
    --primary: 23 23 23;
    --background: 255 255 255;
  }
  @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    :root {
      --primary: 255 245 245;
    }
  }
}

@theme inline {
  --color-primary: rgb(var(--primary));
}

🛠️ Streamlined CLI & Redesigned Installation

We've completely redesigned our CLI initialization process to be faster, cleaner, and strictly non-interactive when necessary.

Starting a New Project

You can easily spin up a new Expo and gluestack-ui v5 project with:

npm create gluestack@latest

Upgrading from v4

If you are upgrading an existing v4 codebase, run our dedicated upgrade utility:

npx gluestack-ui upgrade

The upgrade utility will guide you to update package dependencies, migrate your styling to CSS-first variables, set up PostCSS, and configure your metro builds.

⚠️ Key Upgrading Notes

CSS Variables: Design tokens must live in your

global.css

(instead of

tailwind.config.js

lightningcss: Ensure

lightningcss

is pinned to

1.30.1

in your resolutions/overrides to prevent build-time Metro compilation errors.

Component Re-adding: Once upgraded, re-add your components via CLI to fetch their stable v5 implementations:

npx gluestack-ui add button accordion modal

🎉 Get Started Today!

We want to thank our amazing community for all the feedback during the alpha and preview stages. Check out the updated Quick Start Guide and start building modern, responsive, and accessible native apps with gluestack-ui v5 today!

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