Animated.delay

The essense of Animated.delay internals is that it creates an Animated.timing that does nothing but wait. The main purpose is for using with composing animations in stagger, or sequence.

The other option is to pass in your delay to the animation config when you call it but using Animated.delay is the other option.

Here are 2 equivalent animations

this._animatedValue = new Animated.Value(0);

Animated.timing(this._animatedValue, {
  toValue: 100,
  delay: 300,
  duration: 500,
}).start();

this._animatedValue = new Animated.Value(0);

Animated.sequence([
  Animated.delay(300),
  Animated.timing(this._animatedValue, {
    toValue: 100,
    duration: 500,
  }),
]).start();

In the first we are passing the delay in. In the second we are composing 2 animations, one of those animations is just the Animated.delay of 300 milliseconds.