feat: support native text selection for selectable Text on iOS

[Saadnajmi]

Hi, I would have made this an RFC but I figured it's easier to just see this as a PR. If we like, I can gate this behind a React Native Feature Flag too.

This is upstreaming a change we've had in React Native macOS a while (albeit on Paper, the Fabric one just landed recently), actually originally made by the React Native Desktop team at Meta.

• Original Paper PR: Support arbitrary selectable text in Text component microsoft/react-native-macos#1346
• Fabric PR (just landed): feat(fabric, text): support native text selection when selectable={true} microsoft/react-native-macos#2864

Summary:

React Native on iOS has been missing native selectable text for a while, leading to 3rd parties like Bluesky writing their own native modules to use UITextView. Presumbly the issue is perf, UITextView is much heavier than just rendering text. This PR takes an approach to only pay that cost if selectable is true. When false, we follow the oiriginal fast path.

When enabled:

• A UITextView (RCTParagraphSelectableTextView) is created and swapped in as the content view, replacing the lightweight RCTParagraphTextView
• Text storage is synced from RCTTextLayoutManager so rendering matches
• The UITextView handles selection natively (long press to select, drag handles, double-tap for word selection)
• The context menu (copy) continues to work alongside selection
• The UITextView is torn down on prepareForRecycle and when the prop toggles back to false

Also exposes getTextStorageForAttributedString:paragraphAttributes:size: on RCTTextLayoutManager as a public API, which simply wraps the existing private _textStorageAndLayoutManagerWithAttributesString: method.

Changelog:

[iOS][Added] - Native text selection support for <Text selectable={true}>

Test Plan:

Screen.Recording.2026-03-26.at.5.55.39.PM.mov

[github-actions]

Warning

JavaScript API change detected

This PR commits an update to ReactNativeApi.d.ts, indicating a change to React Native's public JavaScript API.

• Please include a clear changelog message.
• This change will be subject to additional review.

This change was flagged as: POTENTIALLY_BREAKING

[NickGerleman]

Note that, partially for Android, RCTSelectableText was recently added, to accomplish this kind of this. JS side prefers that for selectable text. Right now, that's tied to some feature flags never enabled on iOS though.

[Saadnajmi]

Note that, partially for Android, RCTSelectableText was recently added, to accomplish this kind of this. JS side prefers that for selectable text. Right now, that's tied to some feature flags never enabled on iOS though.

Ah, would you rather I refactor to use that, and just move the UITextView based component to that? When macOS gets there, I can remember to do the same there too.