Oliver Kwast

Great! A lot has improved in terms of tooling and onboarding over the last years. Glad to hear it shows 🙂

One of the nice things with React Native is that you rarely need to do a full native build.

If you run into any difficulties along the way, feel free to reach out.

Haha, now imagine being a classic native developer. Move a view 2pt --> recompile 🤣

But sounds like a great test app. How’s it been so far?

Yeah, same thought here. The ecosystem size definitely matters.

Plus React usually follows quite consistent patterns which probably helps as well.

Completely agree. It’s probably not just JS, but the huge amount of React code available.

And React tends to follow clearer patterns. Other areas are often more individual, which makes suggestions probably less reliable.

How did the build go in the end? 😄

And what were you building on a Friday afternoon?

Working both with React Native and iOS native, I’ve noticed that AI tools seem to be more helpful (at least for me) in React Native projects.

Curious if others have similar or completely different experiences?

Especially the relocating views part looks amazing. I once implemented something similar on the native side for a video player. Having a simpler way to achieve that sounds really promising.

I actually read about Teleport in a newsletter this morning already. It looks awesome.

I have a side project where we’re currently trying to move away from portals because they tend to cause issues. I hope I’ll find some time soon to give Teleport a try.

I published a guide on how to build Instagram-like shared transitions in React Native across all three major platforms:
kirillzyusko.github.io/react-native...

Even Android Instagram and web don’t have this beauty implemented in their apps - but it’s possible in React Native. Check out how!

The last six months were pretty intense. Two projects with tight timelines and some interesting challenges along the way.
So I barely had time to be active here.

Time to change that again 🙂

Who from the React Native community is still around?

React Native 0.84 - Hermes V1 by Default · React Native Today we're excited to release React Native 0.84!

React Native 0.84 is now available!

This release makes Hermes V1 the default JavaScript engine and ships precompiled iOS binaries by default — bringing significant performance improvements and faster build times to all React Native apps.

reactnative.dev/blog/2026/0...

Huge thanks to @expo.dev for featuring our journey with DEPOT on their blog! Big thank you as well to @baumstumpf.bsky.social for the editorial support 🙏
The path to success was built one step at a time - and those incremental improvements compounded to really pay off. 🚀

🤑 Learn how bitglow modernized DEPOT's React Native app with Expo Prebuild, cutting upgrade time by 80% & boosting performance scores from 36 to 90.

The blog from @bonesyblue.bsky.social is a blueprint for speeding up an RN e-comm app and protecting rev with OTA updates.

expo.dev/blog/how-to-...

Do it!

And congratulations 👏

Compiler cache for builds and Workflows - Expo Changelog Control build caching behavior on EAS with environment variables to speed up subsequent builds by up to 30%.

We shipped compiler caching for EAS builds today 🎉

30% faster builds (both platforms), free for everyone, literally just set one env var. ccache does the heavy lifting on native compilation.

SDK 53+ for Android, 54+ for iOS

expo.dev/changelog/co...

React Native 0.83 - React 19.2, New DevTools features, no breaking changes · React Native Today we are excited to release React Native 0.83!

React Native 0.83 is now available!

This release includes React 19.2, new React Native DevTools features, and support for new Web APIs. And, it's the first React Native release with no user facing breaking changes.

reactnative.dev/blog/2025/1...

Reanimated 4.2.0 is here, and it brings gifts! 🔥

🎁 Long-awaited Shared Element Transitions 🎉 Not production-ready yet, so they’re behind a feature flag. Please, test it out and give us feedback!
🎁 Experimental performance fixes, inspired by real apps...

I'm using both professionally and would take RN over Swift for pretty much all standard use cases.
* Faster time-to-market
* OTAs
* Multiplatform
* etc.

In your case, an MVP for a startup idea, just take what makes you get to MVP fastest, I'd say.

👀 You can get a 25% discount today with the code “TODAY25” on my animations course.

More info in the thread below 🧵

CSS Grid by intergalacticspacehighway · Pull Request #1865 · facebook/yoga Why? CSS grid provides us more control to position children in a two-dimensional layout system. It works as a complimemtary system to Flexbox. Official spec for more details/usage. There are a few...

🆕 This PR from @nishan.dev adds CSS grid support to react native 🙌

It's not possible to overstate how massive this is for all of us. Future generations will celebrate Nishan Bende Day 🐐

github.com/facebook/yog...

It seems. You don’t know that React Native uses the same views for rendering as native Swift apps like UIView etc. and does not use webviews.

I'm preparing my Star Wars themed talk on TanStack DB for next week's React(Native) Kiel meetup. If you're around in Kiel on Monday evening, feel free to join us for some nerdy fun! ⚛️
www.meetup.com/kiel-react-n...

Oh, a new version based on Nitro. Sounds interesting!

And, coming later in React Native 0.83, you'll be able to profile and understand your app more intuitively, with native support for the Performance panel and Network panel in React Native DevTools.

Folks are downloading react-native on npm over 4 million times a week, that 100% growth from last React Conf!

The iOS queue times for Free plan users on @expo.dev were around 4 hours at this time last week.

We increased our Mac capacity today. We're seeing <10 min queue times right now. ⚡

Subscribers are seeing 0 min queue times.

Expo SDK 54 - Expo Changelog Learn about the changes and how to upgrade

𝝠 Expo SDK 54 is LIVE 🚀

◆ React Native 0.81
◆ Precompiled RN for iOS → faster clean builds
◆ iOS 26 Liquid Glass icons + views
◆ Android 16 target, edge-to-edge default
◆ Router v6 native tabs
◆ Updates: header overrides, progress, reload screen
◆ So much more...

expo.dev/changelog/sd...

Haha, yeah. Though in RN you don’t need to care about Xcode warnings. The RN team is doing a fantastic job keeping you away from any issues.

Also I’d recommend to use Expo as much as possible to reduce the amount of Xcode in your dev flow even more.

React(Native) Meetup #29, Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 6:30 PM | Meetup Welcome to the 29th React(Native) Meetup Kiel. Everyone is welcome to join us, whatever your experience with React or other web technologies. Since the number of spots is l

📣 The next edition of React(Native) Kiel is coming up next Monday, Aug. 25th! I’ll be co-hosting with @dbanck.com & @baumstumpf.bsky.social and we’ve lined up two talks you won’t want to miss 👇
www.meetup.com/kiel-react-n...

Expo SDK 54 beta is now available - Expo Changelog Learn about the changes, how to try it out, and how to give feedback.

SDK 54 beta is out 🚀

◆ RN 0.81 + React 19.1
◆ Precompiled React Native for iOS → ⚡ faster builds
◆ iOS 26 Liquid Glass icons + Expo UI
◆ Android 16 edge-to-edge + predictive back
◆ Updates to EAS Update + Autolinking
◆ Final release w/ Legacy Arch

Details in the changelog: expo.dev/changelog/sd...