@shopify/react-native-skia iOS Share Extension Issue Reproduction

This repository contains a minimal reproduction of an issue with @shopify/react-native-skia where it fails to render within the context of an iOS share extension. It was bootstrapped with create-expo-app and makes use of the expo-share-extension plugin to create a share extension target.

Issue reported here.

Problem

When attempting to use @shopify/react-native-skia components inside an iOS share extension, the Skia elements do not render. This issue does not occur in the main app, only in the share extension context.

Reproduction steps

1. Clone this repository
2. Install dependencies: npm install
3. Run the iOS app: npm run ios.
   Note: Because iOS share extensions are not supported by Expo Go, this will first run expo prebuild --clean to ensure the app is installed into the simulator/device, instead of running in the Expo Go app.
4. Once the app starts, switch to some other app that allows sharing a URL (Safari, for example). Share the URL with the app. You should see a "skia-share-extension-bug" app in the share sheet, but if not, tap "More" and it should be there. Once you tap it, you should see a new modal screen fully white and no Skia elements rendered. The code that render the Skia elements (a simple RoundedRect) within the share extension is in index.share.js.

Potential fix

I debugged this a bit and ended up in RNSkMetalCanvasProvider.mm where a check exists that will pause rendering if the app is in the background. The check as it is now will also resolve to true if the app is in a share extension context. Perhaps there's a better way to do it, but after some digging I found that we can know that the execution context is an app extension if the bundle path has a .appex suffix, so I patched Skia locally to check for that and it seems to fix the issue.

To try the fix, run npm run patch-skia to apply the patch (npm run unpatch-skia to undo it), and then npm run ios.

Environment

• @shopify/react-native-skia version: 1.2.3
• react-native version: 0.74.5
• expo version: 51.0.37
• expo-share-extension version: 1.10.4
• iOS version: 18.1
• Xcode version: 16.1

Expected behavior

Skia components should render correctly within the iOS share extension, just as they do in the main app.

Actual behavior

Skia components fail to render when used within the iOS share extension.