App crashes if setBoolean called on initial screen

[Nezz]

Description

The first component we display calls setBoolean on mount:

  useEffect(() => {
    riveRef.current?.setBoolean('isFocused', isFocused);
  }, [isFocused]);

This causes the app to crash on iOS here:

rive-react-native/ios/RiveReactNativeViewManager.swift

Line 116 in fb83d70

let component = self.bridge.uiManager.view(forReactTag: node) as! RiveReactNativeView

rive_react_native/RiveReactNativeViewManager.swift:116: Fatal error: Unexpectedly found nil while unwrapping an Optional value

Provide a Repro

export default function InitialComponent() {
  const [isFocused, setIsFocused] = useState(false);
  const riveRef = useRef<RiveRef>(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    riveRef.current?.setBoolean('isFocused', isFocused);
  }, [isFocused]);

  return (
    <Rive
      url="<somethign from the internet>"
      autoplay
      fit={Fit.Cover}
      style={StyleSheet.absoluteFillObject}
      ref={riveRef}
      dataBinding={AutoBind(true)}
    />
  );
}

Source .riv/.rev file

Not animation-specific

Expected behavior

The app should not crash

Screenshots

Not applicable

Device & Versions (please complete the following information)

• Device: iPhone 17 Pro
• OS: iOS 26.0.1
• NPM Version: 10.9.3

Additional context

[mfazekas]

@Nezz thanks much for the bug report. I've tried the component, but could not reproduce the issue. Maybe my environment, or my react native version, or the .riv url is different.

I do have new architecture enabled.

npm ls --depth=0  expo rive-react-native react-native
├── expo@54.0.20
├── react-native@0.81.5
└── rive-react-native@9.6.2

import { useEffect, useRef, useState } from "react";
import { StyleSheet } from "react-native";
import Rive, { AutoBind, Fit, RiveRef } from "rive-react-native";

export default function InitialComponent() {
  const [isFocused, setIsFocused] = useState(false);
  const riveRef = useRef<RiveRef>(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    console.log("riveRef.current=", riveRef.current);
    riveRef.current?.setBoolean('isFocused', isFocused);
  }, [isFocused]);

  return (
    <Rive
      url="https://public.rive.app/community/runtime-files/2195-4346-avatar-pack-use-case.riv"
      autoplay
      fit={Fit.Cover}
      style={StyleSheet.absoluteFillObject}
      ref={riveRef}
      dataBinding={AutoBind(true)}
    />
  );
}

[Nezz]

Can you try dismounting the component right away? I checked and we started seeing this when we added a Rive component to the initial screen of the app, and thats a screen which we navigate away from as soon as things finish loading.

[mfazekas]

@Nezz thanks much I was kinda able to reproduce by adding artificial delay to DispatchQueue.main.async { - See #381. So with #381 this will be an error log in debug version instead of crash. setBoolean will be lost in that case, but it's not really relevant if it's because the component is already gone.

[Nezz]

Thanks, I verified the fix 🎉