[sumo-slonik]

Explanation of Change

On iOS the native tab bar hides together with the push from a tab root, but after a swipe-back it came back only once the pushed screen had fully slid away. React Navigation removes the screen from the state only when the swipe-back gesture ends, and the bar visibility follows the state.

Now, when the swipe-back starts, the tab root screen reports that it is coming back into view (transitionStart with closing: false from react-native-screens), and the bar starts showing right away, together with the gesture. This matches how it already behaves on push and on the header back button. The bar is still the native UIKit tab bar: we only flip the same tabBarHidden flag earlier, and UIKit animates it as before.

• The listener lives in the Effects of the split, workspace and search navigators, the stacks that live inside tabs. Other platforms get a no-op.
• Any change of the active tab or of whether it is at its root clears the early flag, so the navigation state always has the last word.

Trade-off: when the swipe-back is cancelled, react-native-screens tells us only after the screen has slid back into place, so the bar stays visible for a moment over the screen and then hides. Avoiding that would need the bar to track the gesture natively (a react-native-screens patch driving it from the transition coordinator), which felt like too much for this case. Cancelled swipes are rare, so we went with the simpler JS-only fix.

On iOS 26, UIKit's own hide animation cleared the tab icons a moment before it faded the liquid glass, while its show animation brings both in together, so hiding looked abrupt. The existing react-native-screens patch 002, which already makes the bar hide with an animation, now fades the whole bar out itself on iOS 26 and hides it without animation once it is invisible, so the icons and the glass go away together. If the bar has to show again before the fade ends, the fade reverses. Showing the bar still uses UIKit's animation, and iOS 18-25 behave as before. The fade-out is not upstream, so details.md notes that this patch shrinks to it instead of being removed on the react-native-screens 4.29.0 bump.

Fixed Issues

$ #104203
PROPOSAL: N/A

Tests

1. On iOS native, open Inbox and open any chat
2. Verify the tab bar hides together with the chat sliding in. On iOS 26, verify the icons and the glass fade out together, with no icons disappearing first
3. Swipe back from the left edge and verify the tab bar starts showing while the chat is still sliding out, not after it
4. Open the chat again, start a swipe-back and cancel it halfway. Verify the tab bar ends up hidden over the chat (it may stay visible for a moment while the chat snaps back)
5. Open a chat, then its details, and swipe back to the chat. Verify the tab bar does not show
6. Tap the header back button and verify the tab bar shows together with the transition
7. Repeat steps 1-3 on Workspaces (open a workspace) and Search (open a report)
8. Switch tabs and verify the tab bar does not hide or flicker
9. On Android native, verify the tab bar still hides on push and shows on back

• Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

Offline tests

The tab bar visibility does not depend on the network, so the result should match the online run.

1. On iOS native, turn off the network connection
2. Open Inbox and open any chat
3. Swipe back from the left edge and verify the tab bar starts showing while the chat is still sliding out
4. Open the chat again and verify the tab bar hides together with the chat sliding in

QA Steps

Same as tests

• Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

PR Author Checklist

• I linked the correct issue in the ### Fixed Issues section above
• I wrote clear testing steps that cover the changes made in this PR
  • I added steps for local testing in the Tests section
  • I added steps for the expected offline behavior in the Offline steps section
  • I added steps for Staging and/or Production testing in the QA steps section
  • I added steps to cover failure scenarios (i.e. verify an input displays the correct error message if the entered data is not correct)
  • I turned off my network connection and tested it while offline to ensure it matches the expected behavior (i.e. verify the default avatar icon is displayed if app is offline)
  • I tested this PR with a High Traffic account against the staging or production API to ensure there are no regressions (e.g. long loading states that impact usability).
• I included screenshots or videos for tests on all platforms
• I ran the tests on all platforms & verified they passed on:
  • Android: Native
  • Android: mWeb Chrome
  • iOS: Native
  • iOS: mWeb Safari
  • MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• I verified there are no console errors (if there's a console error not related to the PR, report it or open an issue for it to be fixed)
• I verified any copy / text that was added to the app is either coming verbatim from figma or has been approved by marketing (in order to get marketing approval, ask the Bug Zero team member to add the Waiting for copy label to the issue)
• If a new code pattern is added I verified it was agreed to be used by multiple Expensify engineers
• I tested other components that can be impacted by my changes (i.e. if the PR modifies a shared library or component like Avatar, I verified the components using Avatar are working as expected)
• If new assets were added or existing ones were modified, I verified that:
  • The assets are optimized and compressed (for SVG files, run npm run compress-svg)
  • The assets load correctly across all supported platforms.
• If the PR modifies code that runs when editing or sending messages, I tested and verified there is no unexpected behavior for all supported markdown - URLs, single line code, code blocks, quotes, headings, bold, strikethrough, and italic.
• If the PR modifies a generic component, I tested and verified that those changes do not break usages of that component in the rest of the App (i.e. if a shared library or component like Avatar is modified, I verified that Avatar is working as expected in all cases)
• If the PR modifies a component related to any of the existing Storybook stories, I tested and verified all stories for that component are still working as expected.
• If the PR modifies a component or page that can be accessed by a direct deeplink, I verified that the code functions as expected when the deeplink is used - from a logged in and logged out account.
• If the PR modifies the UI (e.g. new buttons, new UI components, changing the padding/spacing/sizing, moving components, etc) or modifies the form input styles:
  • I verified that all the inputs inside a form are aligned with each other.
  • I added Design label and/or tagged @Expensify/design so the design team can review the changes.
• If the PR adds or modifies the UI:
  • I asked an AI agent to review the changes for accessibility issues and addressed its findings.
  • I tested with a screen reader (VoiceOver on macOS) and verified all new/changed elements are reachable with a logical focus order.
  • I verified all new/changed elements have meaningful accessible names and roles.
  • I verified state changes are announced (e.g. checked/unchecked, expanded/collapsed, selected).
• I added unit tests for any new feature or bug fix in this PR to help automatically prevent regressions in this user flow.
• If the main branch was merged into this PR after a review, I tested again and verified the outcome was still expected according to the Test steps.

Screenshots/Videos

Android: Native

Android: mWeb Chrome

iOS: Native

iOS: mWeb Safari

MacOS: Chrome / Safari

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Looks like you've decreased code coverage for some files. Please write tests to increase, or at least maintain, the existing level of code coverage. See our documentation here for how to interpret this table.

Files with missing lines	Coverage Δ
...s/NativeTabNavigator/SetTabRootRevealingContext.ts	100.00% <100.00%> (ø)
...gators/NativeTabNavigator/useIsTabRootRevealing.ts	100.00% <100.00%> (ø)
...abNavigator/useReportTabRootRevealing/index.ios.ts	100.00% <100.00%> (ø)
...on/AppNavigator/Navigators/TabNavigator.native.tsx	100.00% <100.00%> (ø)
...avigator/createSearchFullscreenNavigator/index.tsx	100.00% <100.00%> (ø)
...gation/AppNavigator/createSplitNavigator/index.tsx	100.00% <100.00%> (ø)
...on/AppNavigator/createWorkspaceNavigator/index.tsx	100.00% <100.00%> (ø)
src/libs/Navigation/helpers/isTabRouteAtRoot.ts	91.66% <100.00%> (+0.75%)	⬆️
...gators/NativeTabNavigator/useNativeTabNavigator.ts	97.14% <92.30%> (-2.86%)	⬇️
...iveTabNavigator/useReportTabRootRevealing/index.ts	0.00% <0.00%> (ø)
... and 4409 files with indirect coverage changes

[github-actions]

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