React Native Gesture Handler

React Native Gesture Handler is a declarative API that exposes the native platform's touch and gesture system to React Native applications. It provides a robust and performant way to handle complex gestures like pan, pinch, rotate, and tap directly on the native UI thread, leading to smoother animations and a more responsive user experience compared to JavaScript-based gesture systems. The current stable version is 2.31.1, with an active release cadence that frequently publishes patch and minor updates, and a significant version 3.0 in public beta. Key differentiators include its deep integration with the native UI, enabling seamless interoperability with `react-native-reanimated` for advanced animations, and its move towards a hook-based API in version 3 designed for React Native's New Architecture. It aims to reduce the load on the JavaScript thread by offloading gesture recognition to the native side.