# Ambient Carousel — 3D Cover Carousel with a Living Colour Glow for React Native & Expo

> A cover-flow carousel for React Native: the focused cover faces you, its neighbours fold away in depth, and the stage glows in its colours, a drifting aura that melts from palette to palette in OKLab as you swipe. Reflections, loop, touch and mouse, light and dark, 60 fps.

- Kind: Mobile component (Carousels)
- Price: Free
- License: UpFork Standard License. Use it in unlimited personal and commercial projects. Don't resell or redistribute it on its own.
- Developer: UpFork
- Tags: carousel, media, react-native, expo, skia, reanimated, coverflow, 3d
- npm packages: @shopify/react-native-skia, expo-haptics, react-native-gesture-handler, react-native-reanimated, react-native-svg, react-native-worklets
- Published: 2026-10-14
- Updated: 2026-10-14
- Page: https://upfork.dev/products/ambient-carousel-react-native

## How to get it

It's a React Native component for Expo apps (Expo SDK 57), not a shadcn item: copy its folders into the app's root from its ZIP (Download source on its page) or through UpFork's MCP server (install_product), then install its packages with Expo:

```bash
npx expo install @shopify/react-native-skia expo-haptics react-native-gesture-handler react-native-reanimated react-native-svg react-native-worklets
```

It's free and in no plan: an AI assistant installs it through MCP with no account, and its ZIP downloads with a free UpFork account.

Step by step, with the App.tsx that shows it and Skia's web setup: https://upfork.dev/docs/mobile.

## About

Ambient Carousel is the shelf for new releases, colourways and themes. The cover in front faces you, its neighbours turn away in depth, and the whole stage glows in that cover's colours.

- **A living glow.** Soft blobs of the item's palette drift slowly behind the covers and melt into the next palette as you swipe, blended in OKLab so the colours stay clean. Dithered, no banding, and no edge: it fades to nothing inside its canvas. On a light stage it becomes a pastel wash.
- **Depth that's always right.** Turn, scale, darkening and stacking order all come from one value on every frame, so covers never flicker out of order, even through a hard fling.
- **Weighty swipes.** Momentum that travels several covers on a hard fling and exactly one on a gentle one; tap a side cover to bring it forward, tap the front one to open it.
- **Meta that follows the finger.** The title block slides and fades with the swipe instead of swapping when it stops.
- **Reflections, loop and more.** An optional floor reflection fading through a mask, endless looping, 3, 5 or 7 covers, light and dark, screen readers, reduced motion, and the glow on its own (`AmbientGlow`).

Three complete demos: a music app with twelve drawn album covers, a colourway picker with an original sneaker drawing, and a theme chooser whose buttons tint as you swipe.