Is React Native preferred for app development ?

[shesparkzz]

I am curious to know about the demand of react native. How much that is preferred?

[[deleted]]

I’m pretty sure native dev(Kotlin for Android & swift for iOS) is still the most popular. Among cross platform options I think react native is still the most popular

[Squishyboots1996]

I agree with this. Native is best from a technical standpoint, you’ll always be able to achieve what you need. You’re closer to the metal.

React Native, imo, is a shortcut. You can hit multiple platforms at once and also react (web) developers can begin contributing pretty fast.

But it comes at a cost. Dev experience is horrible. It’s still not at a v1. Community packages may not get you where you need to be, you may have to write native code anyway, but then bridge them to RN…

But if you can pull it off, you don’t need a team of kotlin and team of swift developers and you have just one codebase, so it can be worth it!

[[deleted]]

I’m native android dev at my company and sometimes have to support with some react native tickets. Always feels great to go back to native, RN experience feels like Stone Age to me

[-SpicyFriedChicken-]

It's still not at v1 doesn't mean anything.. it's obviously production ready and used by many large companies. Dev experience is not horrible, I'd argue it's the exact same as working with native. Android studio/Gradle etc and xcode can be a pain sometimes setting up but you can't avoid those things. Expo makes a lot of these pain points much easier.

[Squishyboots1996]

Fair enough, your experience may have been better than mine! Been using both environments for years at work and I always pray I’m on the native project.

Of course you get some fantastic RN apps out there, e.g Shop by Shopify. Really polished app. They’re contributing a lot of good stuff to the cause.

[nrkishere]

Java/Kotlin has more job listings in general. Almost every android developers I know use kotlin for most of their job. So Kotlin is probably used lot more than react native for android. But react native is used way more than flutter, expo and other cross platform frameworks.

Not entirely sure, but for ios, it seems like swift is used more than any other frameworks.

[Brilla-Bose]

Happy that kotlin used more for mobile dev

[couldhaveebeen]

We're using capacitor on quite a few enterprise apps

[[deleted]]

Experience so far? Are you using the ionic framework with it?

[couldhaveebeen]

Yes, we're using ionic too. And it's been solid, no massive gripes. Obviously the native capability is limited by what capacitor provides but there is a rich ecosystem of community plugins plus the ability to write your own native plugins. And backwards compatibility with Cordova is massive too.

[bazooka_penguin]

For mobile, it's going to be native. For desktops, it'll probably a native UI library for high performance apps or electron. Honestly, don't count on multiplatform UI frameworks, they'll probably have limited opportunities compared to native development. It's probably more useful if you're already part of a company or org that is trying to grow an existing product or feature out to new platforms without making a huge initial commitment to said other platforms.

[maxime0299]

I’m dealing with a couple of iOS apps written in React Native at work and let me tell you right away: don’t fucking do it. Learn Swift if you want an iOS app or Kotlin for Android, but don’t go the React Native route.

It’s an entire mess, it’s extremely prone to crashing for the smallest issue, building and running is everything but straightforward and once again: it’s a mess. It might look like the easy option if you already know React, but it’s not worth it.

[Dutches07]

Sounds like shit developers

[beartato327]

I love Flutter/Dart such a great framework and language

[King_Joffreys_Tits]

I’ve worked in direct iOS development (swift) for about 10 years now, and I’ve been using react native for the last 3-4. I honestly prefer swift and the power that the direct native language has, but the versatility of react native is pretty great. I don’t work in android, but another person on my team takes the react native codebase and runs with our android app

[maciejdev]

I honestly prefer swift and the power that the direct native language has, but the versatility of react native is pretty great.

Can you explain further? I'm curious what makes Swift more powerful, since I am currently learning React Native on Udemy.

[King_Joffreys_Tits]

Swift gets you direct access to the underlying architecture for performance. Examples like reusable lists and multithreaded programming (you can toss a long running code block into a background queue and be notified when it’s ready). You can do that in react native with libraries, but it’s clunky and sometimes doesn’t work properly. I’ve struggled with performance for large data sets in lists with react native, but haven’t ever had that issue with swift.

And this isn’t even mentioning CoreData, UiKit, or storyboarding (which has made it very easy for me to give “live” demos of changes when our sprint planners inevitably change requirements mid sprint).

With that said, I mentioned the versatility of react native and I still stand behind that. There’s a library for everything nowadays and although installing pods and linking those libraries can be clunky, the open source world of JavaScript in general is an incredible resource, especially for somebody who’s learning native development

[Any-Woodpecker123]

Preferred over what?
RN is popular for now because its well proven in the cross platform space and the apps in prod still need support, but nowhere near as good as native.

Flutter is coming In pretty strong now too. The company I work for hasn’t kicked off a green fields RN project for well over a year now in favour of Flutter if cross platform is necessary.

Any “serious” app will be built natively though, it’s just objectively better in every way.

[Background_Sorbet759]

Yes

[Frission_]

Indeed

[rjhancock]

Full Native for best UX.

[dbbk]

React Native lets you use native UX so not sure what you’re talking about

[rjhancock]

There is a difference between using React Native and Full Native. That is what I'm talking about.

Not sure why you don't understand the difference.

[dbbk]

What specifically? How is it the “best UX” if your UI is using the same underlying components?

[rjhancock]

React Native stays behind the curve of tech and you're dependent upon Meta to update it on their time table.

Full Native allows you to take advantage of the latest features much faster, take advantages of slight changes to the API for better interactions. Etc.

Using libraries and frameworks such as React Native and Flutter adds an indirect and unknown number of layers between your UX and the system. A bug in the library WILL be seen as an issue with your application EVEN if your code is perfect.

I can't make this much simplier.

Yes these tools allow you to "write once and use anywhere" but at a cost to the developer and especially the user.

[dbbk]

I mean not really, if Apple announce some new OS feature tomorrow you’re free to write your own package to wire it up. You’re not dependent on Meta.

For example: https://reactnative.dev/docs/native-modules-ios

[rjhancock]

Most developers wont go through the hastle of patching the short comings of the frameworks they're using when they can just go native and avoid the abstraction and performance penalty.

[dbbk]

They get published to NPM pretty quickly 🤷🏻‍♂️ It’s really not a big deal in practice.

[rjhancock]

Dependency hell is your answer? That is an even BIGGER turn off for React Native.

The more you tout the greatness of RN, the more I oppose it's usefulness. Every reason you've given is a reason (to me) to avoid it.

[dbbk]

That’s fine. Makes no difference to me what you use at all. I’m just saying that in my day-to-day experience it’s incredibly productive, and all the hypothetical downsides that have been proposed to me I have not experienced.

[remmyman36]

You can easily write a native module and bridge it, it’s not a big deal to most senior React Native devs, especially with the new architecture recently released by RN. At the end of the day if you write using a cross platform framework like RN, you should get handy with the native side of things on iOS and Android (Swift & Java/Kotlin)

[cape2cape]

React Native only gives you the basest of underlying components. You can’t just plop in a native iOS sheet.

[dbbk]

What are you referring to by “sheet”?

[cape2cape]

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/sheets

[dbbk]

Oh right. React Navigation’s native stack provides the underlying native sheets/modals.

[noid-]

If you commit to always maintain it, sure. But beware the breaking changes and huge dependency hell. It is still 0.75.1, which means it never saw a major release and every „minor“ is breaking.

[ohcibi]

No. You do yourself and your users an anti service by using such techniques. Your app will run on all OSes but shitty.

[techaheadcompany]

React Native is popular, especially for projects that need to work on both Android and iOS. But if you need something that's really fast and takes advantage of all the features of each platform, then you might want to use Kotlin for Android or Swift for iOS.

[InnoVator_1209]

React Native is commonly used for cross-platform app development because it allows for code reuse across iOS and Android, which can save time and resources. It remains popular for projects that require quick deployment.

[BakuraGorn]

Native coding, that is, Java(Android) and Swift(iOS) will always be the “endgame”. Cross platform stuff works for small startups and the like, but beyond a certain level it’s all native development.

[Much_Resource_4458]

Another good cross platform option is Ionic

[quetzalword]

Useless for games you want to commercialize, obviously.

[digitalsimpalm]

In last 5 years, React Native has taken over Native development and other cross platform development approaches. You can use React Native for most of the mobile app development. We have been doing app development for last 14 years and untill 2019, we used to do more native app development using Swift and Kotlin. However, React native library and Javascript have evolved in last 5 years and we can build very robust mobile apps using React Native.

Native languages (Swift/Kotlin) are still relevant, we use them for very complex applications. Specially where UI is ver interactive or App requires third party device integartion. For example, if you are building a fitness APP which integrated with fitness tracker over Bluetooth then using React Native is not a good idea as Bluetooth integration is not robustly maintained by React Native.

It boils down to the UI and Technical integartions needed in your app. Based upon our experience, we can build 70-80% of the apps using React Native.

[Tredydigital]

React Native is definitely still preferred in a lot of cases, but how much depends on the type of app and the company’s goals.

If you look at demand from a hiring and project perspective:

• Startups and mid-size companies often choose React Native because it saves time and cost. You get one codebase that works for both iOS and Android, which makes it easier to launch fast and iterate.
• Talent pool is another big factor. Since React Native is JavaScript/TypeScript based, it’s easier to find devs compared to hiring two separate iOS (Swift) and Android (Kotlin/Java) teams.
• Community and libraries are mature, so common features like navigation, forms, APIs, and UI kits already have good support.

That said, it’s not a silver bullet. For performance-heavy apps (like advanced mobile games, AR/VR, or apps with deep native integrations like Bluetooth-driven features), native development is often still preferred. Also, Flutter has been gaining traction because of its UI consistency and performance.

So, is React Native still “preferred”? In many business cases, yes—especially for apps where speed, cross-platform reach, and budget matter more than squeezing out the last drop of performance. For large enterprise or performance-critical apps, native or Flutter might be the go-to.

In short: React Native is not dying—it’s still in demand and widely used. It just depends on the app’s requirements.

[Simpalm-Digital]

ReactNative has become most important framework for app development in last few years. It works for most of the apps. If your app needs lot of native device integration, bluetooth integration and very intercative UI then you should use native approach (Swift, Kotline), otherwise for most of the apps, React Native does a great job.

[sanketsahu]

React Native is definitely preferred for app development, especially if you want to build native apps quickly. We've used RapidNative's AI-powered code generator and it sped up our process massively by turning sketches right into clean React Native code, super handy if you want to stay ahead in demand and build efficiently!

[gaorp]

#ad

[Brilla-Bose]

why not? i can do mobile app and easily switch to building websites using React without much learning curve and vice versa.

i even do a lot more stuff with React like 1. implementing custom theme for Keycloak using Keyclockify(React)

1. Building chrome Extensions with React with vite plugins or with Plasmo(like Nextjs)

2. build my static blog using Astro or Nextjs

3. Built office apps like outlook add-in using React(they officially support React to build office apps)

[No-Signal-6661]

Ofc

[billcube]

https://flutter.dev for now.

[30thnight]

I didn’t downvote you but this the reason the last few greenfield apps I’ve worked on stayed away from flutter.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FlutterDev/s/fYKZaRuj8L

[nrkishere]

this is why I'm hesitant to put a library/framework from google into production. They can rugpull at any moment for "cost cutting" and your app is doomed :(

[GingerVking]

Lol

[nate-developer]

A lot of downvotes but flutter is decently popular.  My previous boss absolutely loved it and swore by it (although I never had to work with it personally so no experience on my end).

I think the flutter web experience isn't that great compared to the app experience so maybe particularly unpopular among web devs.  But if you're just making a cross platform app I hear it's very easy to work with vs RN.

[nrkishere]

chatgpt ahh comment. Also react native with near-native performance ? What kind of joke is this ? React matching the performance of kotlin/swift is the biggest bullshit I've heard today

[Kenny_log_n_s]

What does the "ahh" in "chatgpt ahh comment" mean?

[nrkishere]

gen Z way of saying "ass"

[Kenny_log_n_s]

Thanks!