Issue #2
Hello, developers of Earth! It seems we've made first contact. Our prophet, Dan Abramov, descended upon Wroclaw - Poland, where he unveiled the latest developments happening in both the React and React Native universe. Amongst all the karaoke, open-source rants, and shots shared at the annual React Native Universe Conf, the focus in the React Native world this year was clear… sigh—the new architecture.
So, let’s dive into what went down in React Native at this year’s conference.
As the Children of the Forest wait 6,000 years for React Native 1.0, we mortals have been blessed with version 0.76, set to launch by the end of October. And what's the big headline here? The new architecture is enabled by default. This marks a monumental shift toward a smoother, more efficient development experience… apparently.
But wait, there’s more. Alongside the new architecture, React Native 0.76 will introduce completely revamped development tools. So if you’ve been caught in the eternal battle between Flipper, Redux Native Debugger, and Chrome, your days of debugger chaos are numbered. The React Native team has built React DevTools (despite the confusing name, this tool is actually designed for React Native). The features are still limited, but it’s a step toward providing first-class support for debugging.
More time for debugging, less time for fumbling, I guess I’ll have to find another excuse to skip my Pilates class now.
In this release, we’ll also be saying goodbye to iOS 13 and 14 support. The reason for dropping two versions is that both iOS 14 and 15 support the same minimum iPhone model, which is the iPhone 6s. Therefore, the new minimum iOS version will be 15. On Android, the minimum SDK requirement is being raised to Android 7.0 (API 24), with the previously supported version being Android 6.0 (API 23). You can read more about this decision here for iOS and here for Android.
In an unexpected yet welcome twist, React Native Firebase now supports the new architecture! This news is music to the ears of many developers who have faced barriers in upgrading due to Firebase. Hats off to Mike Hardy and the team for finally making this transition smoother.
If you’ve been keeping up, we mentioned the React Native IDE in our last issue. It’s quietly making moves, and it will support integrated React DevTools, adding yet another tool to streamline development.
Also, you’ll soon be able to launch Storybook stories directly from the editor—no additional setup required. For those unfamiliar with Storybook, it’s a frontend development tool used for building UI components in isolation.
While we were initially skeptical, the IDE is shaping up to be a practical, all-in-one tool that’s slowly proving its worth for React Native developers.
You can see the original tweet or xeet (whatever we call it now) here
It wouldn’t be a true React Native conference without an update from Expo. While they didn’t release anything earth-shattering, they did update their docs—something many of us rely on to get through the day. These updates point to the evolving direction of the Expo SDKs and their Expo Application Services (EAS) platform.
So, I’m not a salesman for Expo Application Services or Athletic Greens, but if I were, I’d probably be driving a Tesla by now. For those who aren’t in the loop, Expo Application Services (EAS) is their cloud platform for building, signing, and deploying your apps, along with other nifty extras like over-the-air (OTA) updates and store metadata management. Detox, for those who live dangerously and don’t typically test their apps, is an end-to-end (e2e) testing tool for building tests on React Native apps.
Now, if you’re one of the brave souls building out Detox test suites, dreaming of the day they’ll run on your CI (Continuous Integration) so you can kick back on the beach, sip a margarita, and tell your boss you're deep into QA testing—well, you might want to hold off on buying that beach chair.
Expo silently archived their Detox test support documentation for EAS, their cloud service. Instead, they’ve shifted their focus to Maestro, a new (I’ve never heard of it) testing tool that’s shaping up to be the go-to solution for mobile testing automation. This shift represents a very different paradigm in how we approach end-to-end (E2E) testing. These impressions are largely based on the silent archiving of the Detox documentation, as no official statements have been made regarding the change.
For those deep in the world of Detox, this may change how you approach testing. You can read about Maestro integration in their updated EAS docs.
With Expo SDK 52, Expo is introducing DOM components, which allow you to render HTML elements directly inside a React Native app using the new use dom directive. Unlike a web view, these HTML components are embedded within the app itself and behave like regular components.
Inside the native component file, import the web component to use it
This feature leverages Expo’s bundler and CLI tools, replacing marked modules with runtime proxies. Though DOM components are slower to parse than optimised native code like Hermes, they can be useful for rendering rich content like markdown or WebGL, where web technology excels. Data between DOM components and native views is passed asynchronously, but native functionality can still be accessed through props.
This is part of a larger trend where Expo is pushing toward a "write once, run everywhere" approach, especially with Expo Router supporting both web and mobile platforms.
Expo visionary Evan Bacon showcased a live demo of this on X. For more, visit the official guide here.
If you’ve ever built a native module in React Native before the new architecture and thought, “I get this, it’s not too hard,” only to try building one under the new architecture and find yourself lost with C++ classes, jsi:: bindings, and interfaces, then you’re going to love Nitro Modules by Marc Rousavy.
Personally, I am very excited about this library. Not only is the performance 10x faster than its counterpart TurboModules (React Native’s module system built on the new architecture) and almost 100x faster than ExpoModules:
It will also generate all the C++ interfaces and native protocols using a TypeScript definition as the single source of truth, providing complete type safety between native code and JavaScript at compile time.
For more technical details, check out the project here.
Lottie React Native 7.0 is here, and it’s packing support for VisionOS, Apple’s futuristic headset. If you remember, last year Callstack released the react-native-visionos package to enable React Native developers to start experimenting with these headsets. With the community rallying behind VisionOS, it seems like we're inching closer to seeing real-world use cases—or, at the very least, all of us walking around looking like Judge Dredd.
In addition to VisionOS support, Lottie 7.0 also requires React Native 0.73+, along with XCode 16. If you’re interested in the details or considering integrating VisionOS into your app, this is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
We love your feedback, and to show our thanks, we’re highlighting your projects! Keep the ideas coming, and we’ll keep sharing your work. Now, here are this week’s plugs:
Authored by Luke Farrell and edited by Friosn.
Heavily inspired by the Bytes JavaScript newsletter—one of our favourites for dev updates— instead, this newsletter is all about diving deeper into React Native and its ecosystem. We still recommend checking out Bytes though, because their meme game is strong: https://bytes.dev.
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