React Native

Three strengths

• One skill, two platforms. You create apps for Android and iOS using React, the same toolkit that powers many websites. 1
• A native feel. What you see on screen is drawn by the phone itself, the same way any other app on it is. 1
• Proven at scale. Apps from Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Shopify and Discord use it, and it runs at scale in the Facebook app. 1 2

What it is

Most businesses want their app on both iPhone and Android, and building one app that runs on both is called cross-platform development. Researchers describe it as difficult because of "device and platform fragmentation", meaning so many different devices, technology choices and trade-offs to weigh. 3 React Native is one toolkit for doing it: it lets a team build apps for both phones using React, the same toolkit that draws the screens of many websites. 1

It began at Facebook, now Meta, where Christopher Chedeau presented it at the company's first React.js Conf, held at Facebook's headquarters on 28 and 29 January 2015. 4 Facebook's engineering blog laid out the idea that March: React runs inside the app and draws the phone's own native screens rather than web page elements, after an earlier approach of putting a website inside an app couldn't deliver "a truly native user experience". The first public release worked on iPhone only, with Android "coming soon". 5

Its motto is "learn once, write anywhere", and Meta's team was clear that it wasn't chasing "write once, run anywhere", so each phone keeps its own feel while the skills carry over. 5

It has kept changing underneath. The original design passed messages between the app's code and the phone through a single channel (a "bridge"), which became a bottleneck and made it hard to keep fast-moving screens smooth. 2 So in October 2024 version 0.76 switched on a rewrite of its inner workings, called the New Architecture, by default. 6

We choose it for those reasons: one team can work across both phones, the skills carry over from our web work, and the apps feel at home on each.

How we use it

We use React Native to build mobile apps for iPhone and Android as part of our Software Development service. The React skills we use on the web carry over, so our web and mobile work share a team and a way of working. Our earlier builds, including apps with in-app calling and direct messaging, used React Native on its own, while our recent work uses Expo, a framework that sits on top of it.

We usually pair it with TypeScript for safety, a component library called Gluestack UI for a consistent look, Node.js and serverless code behind the scenes, and WebSockets for live features such as in-app messaging. Your customers get an app that feels at home on their phone, whichever phone it is.

We use AI-assisted tools to draft and prototype screens quickly. Once an idea is settled, we test it on both iPhone and Android and polish it before we ship it to you.

References

1. React Native, "Learn once, write anywhere", reactnative.dev. https://reactnative.dev/ (accessed 28 October 2026)
2. React Native team, "The New Architecture is here", React Native blog, 23 October 2024. https://reactnative.dev/blog/2024/10/23/the-new-architecture-is-here (accessed 28 October 2026)
3. Biørn-Hansen, A., Grønli, T-M. and Ghinea, G., "A Survey and Taxonomy of Core Concepts and Research Challenges in Cross-Platform Mobile Development", ACM Computing Surveys, 2018. DOI 10.1145/3241739; repository copy at https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/16569 (accessed 28 October 2026)
4. React team, "React.js Conf Round-up 2015", React blog, 18 February 2015. https://17.reactjs.org/blog/2015/02/18/react-conf-roundup-2015.html (accessed 28 October 2026)
5. Facebook Engineering, "React Native: Bringing modern web techniques to mobile", 26 March 2015. https://engineering.fb.com/2015/03/26/android/react-native-bringing-modern-web-techniques-to-mobile/ (accessed 28 October 2026)
6. React Native team, "React Native 0.76 - New Architecture by default, React Native DevTools, and more", React Native blog, 23 October 2024. https://reactnative.dev/blog/2024/10/23/release-0.76-new-architecture (accessed 28 October 2026)