React Markdown Typewriter

This library provides a new component, MarkdownTypewriter, that combines the Markdown component of react-markdown with the animation of typewriter. The animation was created entirely with motion.

Live demo: https://codesandbox.io/p/sandbox/react-markdown-typewriter-rgjf6t

Why?

This library was born during the development of my game engine pixi-vn. I needed a component that would display the current dialogue of a character with the "Typewriter" effect and I also wanted to give the developer the possibility to use Markdown to add style to the text.

For this reason I created this component that I later decided to make available on npm.

Install

This package is ESM only. In Node.js (version 12.20+, 14.14+, or 16.0+), install with npm:

npm install react-markdown react-markdown-typewriter

Use

The component accepts all the props of the react-markdown component and adds some additional props to manage the typewriter effect.

This is a very simple example of how to use the component:

import MarkdownTypewriter from "../components/Typewriter";

export default function NarrationScreen() {
    return (
        <div>
            <MarkdownTypewriter>Hello World</MarkdownTypewriter>
        </div>
    );
}

This is a more complex example:

import { useRef } from "react";
import rehypeRaw from "rehype-raw";
import remarkGfm from "remark-gfm";
import MarkdownTypewriter from "../components/Typewriter";

export default function NarrationScreen() {
    const paragraphRef = useRef<HTMLDivElement>(null);
    return (
        <div ref={paragraphRef}>
            <MarkdownTypewriter
                remarkPlugins={[remarkGfm]}
                rehypePlugins={[rehypeRaw]}
                delay={20}
                motionProps={{
                    onAnimationComplete: () => {
                        console.log("Typewriter finished");
                    },
                    characterVariants: {
                        hidden: { opacity: 0 },
                        visible: { opacity: 1, transition: { opacity: { duration: 0 } } },
                    },
                    onCharacterAnimationComplete: (ref) => {
                        if (paragraphRef.current && ref.current) {
                            let scrollTop = ref.current.offsetTop - paragraphRef.current.clientHeight / 2;
                            paragraphRef.current.scrollTo({
                                top: scrollTop,
                                behavior: "auto",
                            });
                        }
                    },
                }}
            >
                Hello World
            </MarkdownTypewriter>
        </div>
    );
}

API

props

In addition to the react-markdown component props, the component accepts the following props:

delay: The delay in milliseconds between the appearance of one letter and the next. Default: 10. (Optional)
motionProps (Optional):
- The props to pass to the motion span.
- characterVariants: The motion variants for each individual letter. Default: { hidden: { opacity: 0 }, visible: { opacity: 1, transition: { opacity: { duration: 0 } } } } (Optional).
- onCharacterAnimationComplete: A callback that is called when the animation of a letter is complete. The callback is called with the reference to the letter. (Optional)

Package detail