Comparing the top 3 React lightbox libraries

In this guide, we will compare the top three libraries for React lightbox implementations, according to npm weekly downloads:

• React Photoswipe Gallery
• Simple React Lightbox
• React Lightgallery

We will compare the installation methods, implementations, advantages, and limitations of these three lightbox galleries and help you figure out which lightbox implementation you should use for your React project.

What is a lightbox?

A lightbox implementation overlays an image or video player on your screen, filling out the entire screen and dimming out the rest of the screen’s contents. A simple lightbox implementation looks something like this:

The original lightbox was a simple JavaScript implementation that was later configured for jQuery in 2012. The jQuery implementation was very popular due to its ease of implementation and elegant style.

The library was later adopted into many different libraries like the ones we’ll cover in this article. These libraries have also been adapted to serve the many frontend frameworks that are available today.

React Photoswipe Gallery

React Photoswipe Gallery is a React component wrapper made around Photoswipe, which is an open source JavaScript lightbox plugin developed by Dmitry Semenov in 2014 that has zero dependencies. React Photoswipe ships with some nice touch gestures for cross-platform applications, such as:

• Touch to zoom or zoom with a click
• Pinch to close on mobile devices
• Smart lazy loading
• Responsive image support

To install React Photoswipe Gallery, run the following command:

npm install photoswipe react-photoswipe-gallery --save

Basic usage

The React Photoswipe Gallery package ships with <Gallery /> and <Items /> components that can be used for any basic lightbox implementation. The <Gallery /> component is the main React Photoswipe gallery wrapper and it implements the original Photoswipe UI and layout.

The <Items /> component acts like a child component to the <Gallery /> component and is used to pass predefined image dimensions, which are required to display the lightbox. Use the following code snippet to implement a single image lightbox.

import "photoswipe/dist/photoswipe.css";
import "photoswipe/dist/default-skin/default-skin.css";

import { Gallery, Item } from "react-photoswipe-gallery";

function App() {
return (
  <Gallery>
    <Item
      original="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=2"
      thumbnail="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=2"
      width="1024"
      height="768"
    >
      {({ ref, open }) => (
        <img
          ref={ref}
          onClick={open}
          src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=2"
        />
      )}
    </Item>
  </Gallery>
);
}

export default App;

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To create a multi-image lightbox gallery, simply add more items to the <Gallery /> component.

import "photoswipe/dist/photoswipe.css";
import "photoswipe/dist/default-skin/default-skin.css";

import { Gallery, Item } from "react-photoswipe-gallery";

function App() {
return (
  <Gallery>
    <Item
      original="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=2"
      thumbnail="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=2"
      width="1024"
      height="768"
    >
      {({ ref, open }) => (
        <img
          ref={ref} onClick={open}
 src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=2" />
      )}
    </Item>
    <Item
      original="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=3"
      thumbnail="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=3"
      width="1024"
      height="768"
    >
      {({ ref, open }) => (
        <img ref={ref} onClick={open} 
src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=3" />
      )}
    </Item>
  </Gallery>
);
}

export default App;

React Photoswipe Gallery also provides a <CustomGallery /> component and a <DefaultLayout /> component for editing the original Photoswipe UI and layout. For example, you can customize your UI by creating a CSS file, and then referencing the CSS file in your <CustomGallery /> component as a UI prop.

You can learn more about React Photoswipe Gallery in their documentation.

Advantages

• Easy to set up and implement
• Actively maintained, well-documented library
• Easy to configure and customize
• Ships with nice features like smooth transitions, touch gestures, and zoom, which makes it very easy to implement the same functionality on mobile devices and the web

Limitations

• Zero support for audio and video files
• Zero support for inline galleries
• Requires preset image dimensions

This last bullet can have a massive effect on how the lightbox image behaves on different screen sizes. A solution to this would be to create multiple lightbox versions of the same image, but with different dimensions that will display differently to a user depending on the screen size with responsive CSS.

Simple React Lightbox

The Simple React Lightbox library is the most popular of the three lightbox packages. Simple React Lightbox provides a React component wrapper (<SRLWrapper />) for implementing lightbox functionality on images, audio, or video files coming from any external source, including one you can define.

It’s worth mentioning that Simple React Lightbox ships with a free version and a paid pro version, which is currently on hiatus. The free version gives you the ability to add lightbox functionality to only images, while the pro version gives you the additional ability to implement lightbox in audio and video files.

Similar to React Photoswipe Gallery, Simple React Lightbox also allows you to build on top of the lightbox, such as customizing your UI and layout, adding touch gestures and thumbnail galleries, and more.

To get started with Simple React Lightbox, run the following command to install it in your project.

npm install --save simple-react-lightbox

Then, add the Simple React Lightbox context to your main React component.

import SimpleReactLightbox from 'simple-react-lightbox'

ReactDOM.render(
 <React.StrictMode>
   <SimpleReactLightbox>
     <App />
   </SimpleReactLightbox>
 </React.StrictMode>,
 document.getElementById("root")
);

Basic usage

As mentioned before, Simple React Lightbox provides a <SRLWrapper /> component that can be wrapped around images to implement the Lightbox functionality.

You can use the following code snippet to implement a simple, single-image lightbox. The <a /> tag should contain the link to the lightbox image, while <img /> should contain the link to the thumbnail image.

import { SRLWrapper } from "simple-react-lightbox";


function App() {
 return (
   <SRLWrapper>
     <div>
       <a href="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=2">
         <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=2" alt="lightbox" />
       </a>
     </div>
   </SRLWrapper>
 );
}

export default App;

You can also create a thumbnail gallery by adding more images to the <SRLWrapper /> component. An inline gallery is automatically added to the lightbox.

import { SRLWrapper } from "simple-react-lightbox";


function App() {
 return (
   <SRLWrapper>
     <div>
       <a href="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=2">
         <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=2" alt="lightbox" />
       </a>
       <a href="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=3">
         <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=3" alt="lightbox1" />
       </a>
       <a href="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=4">
         <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=4" alt="lightbox2" />
       </a>
       <a href="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=5">
         <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=5" alt="lightbox3" />
       </a>
     </div>
   </SRLWrapper>
 );
}

export default App;

Compared to React Photoswipe, Simple React Lightbox UI is much more customizable. You can easily edit the UI by passing settings, caption, thumbnail, and button props as options to the <SRLWrapper /> component. For example:

import { SRLWrapper } from "simple-react-lightbox";

const options = {
 buttons: {
   iconColor: "##610604",
   iconPadding: "10px"
 },
 caption: {
   captionColor: "#61O6O4",
   captionFontSize: "20px",
 },
 settings: {
   overlayColor: "#D8B863"
 },
 thumbnails: {
   thumbnailsAlignment: "center",
 },
};

function App() {
 return (
   <SRLWrapper options={options}>
     <div>
       <a href="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=2">
         <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=2" alt="lightbox" />
       </a>
       <a href="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=3">
         <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=3" alt="lightbox1" />
       </a>
       <a href="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=4">
         <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=4" alt="lightbox2" />
       </a>
       <a href="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=5">
         <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=5" alt="lightbox3" />
       </a>
     </div>
   </SRLWrapper>
 );
}

export default App;

The above code will redesign the UI to this:

Advantages

• Simple React Lightbox is very easy to set up, implement, and customize
• Actively maintained, well-documented library, very easy to configure
• Ships with amazing features like touch gestures, thumbnail support, etc.

Limitations

• The package supports videos and audio files in the paid version only

React Lightgallery

React Lightgallery is another React component wrapper made around lightGallery.js, a modular JavaScript image and video lightbox gallery plugin. React Lightgallery ships prepackaged with features like inline gallery, pinch to zoom, and swipe to close, among others. It is also cross-device and works well on both mobile devices and the web.

You can install React Lightgallery in your project with the following command.

npm install --save react-lightgallery

Then, import the Lightgallery CSS file and add the React Lightgallery context to your main React component.

import "lightgallery.js/dist/css/lightgallery.css";
import { LightgalleryProvider } from "react-lightgallery";

ReactDOM.render(
 <React.StrictMode>
   <LightgalleryProvider>
     <App />
   </LightgalleryProvider>
 </React.StrictMode>,
 document.getElementById("root")
);

Basic usage

React Lightgallery provides a <LightgalleryItem /> component that can be used to easily implement a single-image lightbox functionality.

import { LightgalleryItem } from "react-lightgallery";

function App() {
 return (
   <div>
     <LightgalleryItem src="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=2">
       <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=2" />
     </LightgalleryItem>
   </div>
 );
}

export default App;

React Lightgallery also provides support for an inline gallery.

import { LightgalleryItem } from "react-lightgallery";

function App() {
 return (
   <div>
     <LightgalleryItem src="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=2">
       <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=2" />
     </LightgalleryItem>
     <LightgalleryItem src="https://picsum.photos/1024/768?image=1">
       <img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300?image=1" />
     </LightgalleryItem>
   </div>
 );
}

export default App;

The React Lightgallery package can be easily configured and customized for your needs. The package provides a list of supported original lightGallery.js plugins and props for extending the <LightgalleryItem /> component. For example, you can easily implement social sharing by adding the lg-share.j plugin as a plugins prop in the <LightgalleryItem /> component.

The React Lightgallery package also provides access to a React higher-order component (withLightgallery), and a React Hook (useLightgallery) for use inside of <LightgalleryProvider />.

You can learn more about how to use the plugins, props, higher-order components, and React Hook by visiting the React Lightgallery documentation.

Advantages

• Easy to set up, implement, and customize
• Excellent documentation
• Ships with amazing features like inline gallery, pinch to zoom, swipe to close, etc.

Limitations

• The package does not have any support yet for video and audio lightboxes

Which Lightbox implementation should you use for your React project?

These three React lightbox libraries are excellent choices for implementing lightbox functionality in your project, but, selecting a final library for your project should depend on your project’s specific requirements.

React Photoswipe Gallery and React Lightgallery offer a lot of amazing features, but both lack video and audio file support out of the box. While Simple React Lightbox offers video and audio lightbox support, it only does so in its paid version, which is currently on hiatus. If you need to implement a video lightbox in addition to a photo lightbox, you can use a package like React Image and Video Lightbox for the implementation.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that Simple React Lightbox has the biggest community of the three. This means you will get access to more support when you use this package over others.

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