useEffect not called in React Native when back to screen

When you navigate from A to B, component A is not destroyed (it stays in the navigation stack). Therefore, when you navigate back the code does not run again.

Perhaps a better way to acheive what you want to to use the navigation lifecycle events (I am assuming you are using react-navigation) I.e. subscribe to the didFocus event and run whatever code you want whenever the component is focussed E.g

const unsubscribe = props.navigation.addListener('didFocus', () => {
    console.log('focussed');
});

Don't forget to unsubscribe when appropriate e.g.

// sometime later perhaps when the component is unmounted call the function returned from addListener. In this case it was called unsubscribe
unsubscribe();

Below solution worked for me:

import React, { useEffect } from "react";
import { useIsFocused } from "@react-navigation/native";

const ExampleScreen = (props) => {
    const isFocused = useIsFocused();

    useEffect(() => {
        console.log("called");
 
        // Call only when screen open or when back on screen 
        if(isFocused){ 
            getInitialData();
        }
    }, [props, isFocused]);

    const getInitialData = async () => {}    

    return (
        ......
        ......
    )
}

I've used react navigation 5+

@react-navigation/native": "5.6.1"

The current version of React Navigation provides the useFocusEffect hook. See here.

React Navigation 5 provide a useFocusEffect hook, is analogous to useEffect, the only difference is that it only runs if the screen is currently focused. Check the documentation https://reactnavigation.org/docs/use-focus-effect

 useFocusEffect(
    useCallback(() => {
      const unsubscribe = setRoleID(props.user.SELECTED_ROLE.id)
      return () => unsubscribe()
    }, [props.user])
  )