Lifecycle & Events
What a paywall knows and when — the preload rule that shapes every entry animation, and the SDK events you can react to.
The SDK preloads paywalls hidden before showing them. Your components mount long before anyone is looking — so a mount-timed animation (a useEffect on mount, Motion's initial/animate firing on mount, a CSS animation on load) has already finished by the time the paywall appears. This one fact shapes every entry animation you'll write.
Gate entry animations on presentation, never mount
The presentation signal is useSuperwallSnapshot().paywall — it flips from undefined when the paywall is actually shown:
import { useSuperwallSnapshot } from "superwall/hooks";
const opened = useSuperwallSnapshot().paywall !== undefined;
<motion.div
initial={{ opacity: 0, y: 14 }}
animate={opened ? { opacity: 1, y: 0 } : { opacity: 0, y: 14 }}
/>Unlike an event listener added in an effect, the snapshot cannot miss the moment — it reads current state rather than waiting to be told.
Value-driven animations gate on both conditions. A price count-up starts when opened && raw !== undefined — never when the store delivers the price (it would play while hidden), and never on a missing value (it would land on a made-up figure):
const rawPrice = Number(annual?.variables.rawPrice);
const raw = Number.isFinite(rawPrice) ? rawPrice : undefined;
React.useEffect(() => {
if (opened && raw !== undefined) {
const controls = animate(price, raw, { duration: 0.9, ease: "circOut" });
return () => controls.stop();
}
}, [opened, raw]);The with-motion example is the reference for both patterns. The ownership rule that goes with them: animation libraries animate inside a page — moving between pages is the router's job, so spamming navigation can never fight your component animations. See Transitions.
Events you can react to
import { useSuperwallEvent } from "superwall/hooks";
useSuperwallEvent("transaction_complete", () => haptics.success());
useSuperwallEvent("freeTrial_start", () => { /* trial began */ });| Event | Fires when |
|---|---|
paywall_open | The paywall is presented (or re-presented). Prefer snapshot.paywall for anything render-driving. |
transaction_complete | A purchase or restore succeeded — whoever started it. |
transaction_abandon | The store sheet was closed. |
freeTrial_start | A trial actually began. Also triggers the configured trial reminder. |
experiment | The experiment assignment arrived (experimentId, variantId, campaignId). |
back_button_input | Android hardware back. |
game_controller_input | Controller input — needs gameControllerEnabled: true in config. |
message | Every incoming SDK message — the debugging firehose. |
Subscriptions last the component's lifetime; an inline arrow handler is fine.
For products, variables, and trial eligibility, use the dedicated hooks instead of events — they read current state and cannot miss data that arrived before your component subscribed. Data arrives progressively after open (paywall id → products → variables → trial eligibility → experiment), which is one more reason every read is guarded.
Dark mode
The device decides; the framework maintains a dark/light class on <html>. Style with plain CSS and write no wiring:
:root { --bg: #fdfef6; --fg: #0c0b0a; }
:root.dark { --bg: #1c1b19; --fg: #fdfef6; }Don't use @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) as the mechanism — it cannot see what the device reports and ignores the studio's theme toggle. The class is the mechanism. Styling & mobile design has the full treatment, including Tailwind.
Dev vs device
The same paywall runs against a simulated host in superwall dev and the real SDK on device — purchases are simulated in one and real in the other, product variables are injected by the studio in one and delivered by the SDK on the other, and numeric variables arrive as strings on device. The full comparison table is in The studio.
The platform stylesheet
Published paywalls receive a small Superwall-owned stylesheet at serve time — platform-wide behavior like scroll control. Previews apply the same one, so local and published render identically. Set SUPERWALL_RUNTIME_URL in the project .env only if you need previews to use a local build of that platform layer.
How is this guide?