Android crashes when it tries to render TextInput

This is a known React Native issue(opens in a new tab) with version 0.64 and later. React Native 0.64 isn't compatible with the latest version of Appcompat(opens in a new tab), a library that’s part of the androidx namespace. When an app tries to render TextInput, a NullPointerException is thrown.

Below, as highlighted in the GitHub issue(opens in a new tab) of the React Native repository, we outline what you can do to resolve the issue.

Updating your Gradle build configuration

As a temporary workaround to solve the issue, pin the Appcompat library to version 1.3.1, which doesn’t cause the NullPointerException:

implementation ("androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.3.1") {
    version {
        strictly '1.3.1'
    }
}