5 Simple Steps to Build Custom React Animated Tabs

If you're building a SaaS, user experience matters. Smooth reactions to clicks build trust with users and raise the perceived value of your software. Today, we're cutting straight to the chase: here is a step-by-step guide on how to build sleek react animated tabs using framer motion to maximize your conversion rates.

Step by Step Guide to React Animated Tabs

Let's build this from scratch.

Step 1: Install Dependencies

First, ensure you have the motion package installed in your project. This is the modern, optimized engine for react animations.

npm install motion

Step 2: Set Up the Base Container Component

Next, we'll create the client component file that holds our state. Instead of juggling complex positioning with traditional CSS transitions, we'll wrap our elements in a standard Tailwind flexbox container using React state.

"use client";

import { useState } from "react";
import { motion } from "motion/react";

export default function AnimatedTabs({ tabs = ["Home", "Products", "Services", "Pricing"] }: { tabs?: string[] }) {
  const [selected, setSelected] = useState<string>(tabs[0]);

  return (
    <div className="flex flex-wrap items-center justify-center gap-2 rounded-xl p-2 w-full max-w-lg mx-auto overflow-hidden">
      {tabs.map((tab) => (
        /* We will define the Tab component in the next step */
        <Tab text={tab} selected={selected === tab} setSelected={setSelected} key={tab} />
      ))}
    </div>
  );
}

Step 3: Extract the Individual Tab Component

Extracting the individual tab makes conditionally rendering the animated background much cleaner. The individual tab receives the selected boolean to figure out whether it should render the indicator.

interface TabProps {
  text: string;
  selected: boolean;
  setSelected: React.Dispatch<React.SetStateAction<string>>;
}

const Tab = ({ text, selected, setSelected }: TabProps) => {
  return (
    <button
      onClick={() => setSelected(text)}
      className={`relative rounded-md px-4 py-2 text-sm font-medium transition-colors ${
        selected ? "text-neutral-100" : "text-neutral-400 hover:text-neutral-200"
      }`}
    >
      <span className="relative z-10">{text}</span>
      {/* Indicator logic goes here */}
    </button>
  );
};

Step 4: Implement the Layout Transition

This is where framer motion shines. When selected is true, we conditionally render a motion.span. Crucially, we assign it a layoutId.

When framer motion detects a layoutId component unmounting in one place and mounting in another simultaneously, it skips the DOM refresh and seamlessly glides the element across the screen.

{selected && (
        <motion.span
          layoutId="animated-tab-indicator"
          transition={{ type: "spring", bounce: 0.2, duration: 0.6 }}
          className="absolute inset-0 z-0 rounded-md bg-neutral-800 shadow-sm"
        />
      )}

The Final Component Demonstration

Below is a live, fully functional demonstration of the very component we've just discussed piece by piece. Try clicking around between the tabs to feel the spring physics interpolation in action:

Feel how smooth the intersection between the buttons is? No matter how quickly you click, the spring physics dynamically adjust velocity to ensure the indicator always reliably snaps to your latest intention.

The Complete Component Code

If you want to paste this directly into your codebase, ensure you have the necessary dependencies installed (npm install framer-motion). You can save this inside your components folder and consume it anywhere in your app.

"use client";

import { motion } from "motion/react";
import { useState } from "react";

interface TabProps {
  text: string;
  selected: boolean;
  setSelected: React.Dispatch<React.SetStateAction<string>>;
}

export default function AnimatedTabs({ tabs = ["Home", "Products", "Services", "Pricing"] }: { tabs?: string[] }) {
  const [selected, setSelected] = useState<string>(tabs[0]);

  return (
    <div className="flex flex-wrap items-center justify-center gap-2 rounded-xl p-2 w-full max-w-lg mx-auto overflow-hidden">
      {tabs.map((tab) => (
        <Tab text={tab} selected={selected === tab} setSelected={setSelected} key={tab} />
      ))}
    </div>
  );
}

const Tab = ({ text, selected, setSelected }: TabProps) => {
  return (
    <button
      onClick={() => setSelected(text)}
      className={`relative rounded-md px-4 py-2 text-sm font-medium transition-colors ${
        selected ? "text-neutral-100" : "text-neutral-400 hover:text-neutral-200"
      }`}
    >
      <span className="relative z-10">{text}</span>
      {selected && (
        <motion.span
          layoutId="animated-tab-indicator"
          transition={{ type: "spring", bounce: 0.2, duration: 0.6 }}
          className="absolute inset-0 z-0 rounded-md bg-neutral-800 shadow-sm"
        />
      )}
    </button>
  );
};

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I create react animated tabs efficiently?
The most efficient way to build this pattern is avoiding raw CSS math and instead utilizing the layoutId property found within framer motion. By wrapping your moving indicator in a conditional component and binding the layoutId to a static string like 'activeTab', the library automatically interpolates layout changes seamlessly when the selected state changes.

Why use framer motion over plain CSS transitions?
Plain CSS transitions struggle heavily with dynamic layout changes between non-sibling DOM elements without intricate math involving browser APIs. By employing the FLIP animation technique natively, framer motion mitigates coordinate snapping entirely, dramatically reducing the amount of JavaScript logic you need to write.

Should SaaS founders build their own react animations?
In short: probably not. While learning to create beautiful micro-interactions is a deeply satisfying engineering endeavor, a founder's primary focus must always be achieving robust product-market fit. Handcrafting bespoke interface elements is a massive time sink that actively pulls you away from core business goals.

Stop Wasting Time on Frontend Nuance

If building that out felt like too many steps to secure just one single aesthetic polish—you are completely right.

A high-converting SaaS needs react animated tabs, smooth dropdowns, staggered loading states, parallax heroes, and magnetic buttons. It all adds up to an experience that feels significantly more expensive than your competitors. But writing these all from scratch using complex spring hooks and physics math takes literal weeks of trial and error. Weeks where your product sits unlaunched. Weeks where no new paying users are hitting your Stripe checkout page.

You are a founder. Your time is immensely valuable. Every hour you spend fiddling with SVG alignments and ease-out curves is an hour you aren't spending talking to customers or marketing your software.

This is exactly why we built ogBlocks. Our definitive library offers copy-and-paste access to the best react animations available on the web today, built carefully with the bleeding edge framer motion stack and pristine Tailwind CSS. With ogBlocks, you get instant access to hundreds of battle-tested, conversion-optimized frontend modules that look like they were built by a massive Silicon Valley design team.

Ready to stop debugging layouts and start shipping products?

Upgrade your SaaS instantly and buy the full ogBlocks component library today. Save hundreds of hours, impress your investor stakeholders, and finally launch that beautiful product.