Before building React Native Shadow Generator, we looked at how existing generators handle the split between iOS's shadow properties and Android's single elevation number.
A straight line isn't what Android actually does
iOS shadows are set with four properties — color, offset, opacity, radius. Android's Material Design elevation collapses all of that into one number, and its shadow opacity falls off exponentially as elevation increases, not linearly. We found a developer who wrote up fixing exactly this in an existing generator, after noticing shadows looked wrong at both the low and high ends of the elevation range because the tool used straight-line interpolation instead. This tool's Android preview and its "auto-suggest elevation" feature both use an exponential curve from the start.
shadowColor quietly does nothing on Android
One thing we didn't find clearly stated on the generator we checked: Android's native elevation shadow is always a fixed gray/black tone — setting shadowColor has no effect there, only on iOS. Without a heads-up, it's easy to set a colored shadow, see it work in the iOS preview, ship it, and find out the color silently disappears on an Android device. This tool keeps that note visible next to the Android preview at all times.
Code you can paste, not a bag of properties
The generator we checked outputs shadowColor, shadowOffset, shadowOpacity, shadowRadius, and elevation as a flat object — you still have to wire it into Platform.select and StyleSheet.create yourself. This tool's output comes pre-wired with both, ready to paste into a component's stylesheet.
