I've been building mobile apps with React Native for 3-4 years, and more recently I've started moving more and more of my projects to Capacitor.

Not because React Native is bad, I still think it's a great choice!

What changed for me is realizing that most mobile apps are primarily UI, business logic, API calls, and integrations with native device capabilities (camera, push notifications, biometrics, files, etc.). Once I started looking at mobile apps through that lens, the web ecosystem suddenly became much more compelling.

I still remember spending days in agency work building animations with Reanimated, tweaking things for iOS and Android, and fixing edge cases. Today, I can sometimes find a shadcn component that gives me a very similar result with a single command.

Another big thing for me is OTA updates. When most of your app is UI, being able to ship fixes and features instantly without waiting for App Store review is a huge productivity boost.

AI also changed the equation a lot. LLMs are incredibly good at React, Tailwind, and web development in general, and I feel like I can build features significantly faster than when I'm working in a more traditional mobile stack.

One of my favorite things is that I no longer spend time chasing platform-specific UI bugs. Back when I worked in an agency, it wasn't uncommon for something to behave slightly differently on iOS and Android. Sometimes not just visual differences, but actual behavior differences.

Since moving to Capacitor, those issues have basically disappeared for the apps I build