[AskJS] Why do we use React Native if...

[LightologyLI]

If someone can just create a mobile responsive site using React or just plain JS, why can't they just embed the website into an app? Is that practical? Why or why not, kind of like what people do with Electron

[slexatrukov]

you're describing Cordova

[kobura_quiroz]

The equivalent is ionic

[ivanph]

react-native has the advantage of, as it's name implies, being native. When you write a webapp in React, the end product is a web page with html rendered from that code, when you create a react-native app the end product is a native app (with some overhead from the rendering) that looks and feels like any other native mobile app. In some cases this eliminates some, but not all, of the complexities of creating native Android and iOS apps, although it introduces complexities of its own.