React Native
Meta's open-source framework for writing iOS and Android apps from one JavaScript and TypeScript codebase, with native code added where a feature needs it.
Updated October 2026 · with examples from our own builds
What does React Native mean in practice?
React Native lets one team write most of an app once and ship it to both phone platforms. Screens, navigation and business logic are shared; platform features such as store billing, widgets or background location can be written natively and called from the shared code.
The appeal is cost and consistency: one codebase, one set of screens to test and the same behaviour on both phones. It also suits teams whose web and backend developers already work in JavaScript or TypeScript.
What you sign up for is upgrades and native edges. Each React Native release and each new Android or iOS version needs testing, and some store features, billing libraries among them, need native modules that someone has to maintain.
React Native at a glance
- One codebase for
- iOS and Android, with native modules where needed
- Recurring work
- Framework and operating-system upgrades
- Watch
- Features that need native code on one platform
Where has React Native come up in our builds?
One React Native app serves both clients and trainers through separate navigators, so the two sides share one codebase, one login and one chat.
Subscriptions run on our own Kotlin TurboModule over Play Billing Library 9.1.0, behind the same one-file purchases wrapper the screens already called, so not one screen file changed when we replaced RevenueCat.
The customer and driver apps are separate React Native Android apps, and the route-refetch decision is one pure function in a file that is byte-identical in both. There is no iOS app.
Common questions about React Native
Will a React Native app feel slower than a native one?
For most business apps users don't notice, provided heavy screens are built carefully. On Trainr a peer's typing used to re-render a 1,500-line chat screen until the typing indicator was given its own state.
Can a React Native app use platform features like billing or home-screen widgets?
Yes, through native modules. LeafRanger's Play Billing integration is a Kotlin module the shared code calls, and Temphera has a SwiftUI home-screen widget written, though not yet added to its iOS build.
Related terms
Sources
Planning a product and not sure where React Native fits? Ask us, or browse all 116 terms in the glossary.