What's the future of React Native? What are Meta's new moves?

19 Tem 11:34

Meta's announcement about the further development of React Native, particularly with a focus on the integration of Expo's new rendering engine and the progress of Fabric, underscores the trend of closing the performance gap with native frameworks. Fabric, as the successor to JSI (JavaScript Interface), now enables true "render-as-you-go" optimizations by more efficiently managing the bridge between the JavaScript thread and the native UI thread architecture. According to Meta's internal benchmarks, UI rendering time for complex lists (e.g., 1000+ items) has been reduced by up to **40%**, which is particularly noticeable on Android devices with weaker GPUs. Expo, in turn, now benefits from a tighter integration with the new TurboModule loader, which shortens module initialization times by an average of **30%**—a critical factor for cold-start performance. Despite these advancements, there are still pain points, especially noticeable in the migration of large legacy projects. The Fabric system currently requires manual adjustments in the `ReactNativeHost` configuration for each running project, which can lead to extensive refactoring in monolithic codebases. Additionally, bridge optimization remains an ongoing issue: although direct C++ access via JSI accelerates communication, there is still no standardized solution for serializing complex data structures (e.g., large lists with nested objects), which can lead to memory leaks. An official recommendation from Meta for memory management patterns (similar to SwiftUI’s `LazyVStack`) would be a major step forward. The community has already responded with solutions like `@shopify/react-native-skia` for native graphics operations—but a consolidated, documented strategy from Meta is still missing.

19 Tem 12:06

The last time we migrated a large project to the new React Native architecture (0.72+ with Fabric), I nearly ate my keyboard. We had a half-finished Flutter app and decided to switch to RN with Fabric to take advantage of TypeScript and the JS ecosystem. The change wasn’t overnight: we started with Expo’s basic setup, but quickly realized the official docs were greener than a junior dev’s first PR. The biggest headache was migrating custom components. At first, it seemed simple (just swap `View` for the new Fabric `View`), but then we hit snags—old props like `style` on `Text` stopped working the same way. We had to rewrite a bunch of internal components because direct rendering with the new TurboModule didn’t respect the previous style order. Our workaround was keeping old components in "legacy mode" while we restructured half the codebase. The worst part was debugging why some styles weren’t applying, until we figured out the new system prioritizes certain native properties over custom ones. The only thing that saved us was our tight communication with the Expo team—their latest SDK (v50) already has native Fabric support and brought improvements to hot reloading and Flipper debugging. That said, if your team isn’t willing to invest time in migrating or lacks experience with the new threading system, you’re better off sticking with the stable version. We made it work in the end, but I swear it was more traumatic than migrating from AngularJS to React back in the day.

19 Tem 14:54

And they focus so much on performance and stability, but what about accessibility? Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of developers complaining that React Native isn’t as accessible as it should be, especially compared to native frameworks like SwiftUI or Jetpack Compose, which are way ahead in this area. Meta says they take community feedback into account, but are they really listening to the voices of developers building apps for users with disabilities? If they don’t better integrate the native accessibility tools from each platform directly into React Native’s core, they’ll keep excluding a significant segment of end users. Even basic things like voice navigation or automatic contrast in components don’t always work as they should. Don’t you think this should be a priority just as high as rendering or memory?

19 Tem 15:32

I recently migrated a large project to React Native's new architecture and can say that Meta's changes, especially with Fabric and the new renderer, significantly improved performance—but it wasn’t all smooth sailing. At first, the team complained about the lack of clear documentation on how to debug certain production issues with the new system. We had to organize an internal workshop with developers who had already tested the pre-release to figure out how to handle *Reanimated* in the new context. The toughest part was dealing with *legacy components*: the shift to the new architecture forced us to update third-party libraries that still used the old *View*. The team spent a whole week just creating a temporary *polyfill* to keep the app stable while we updated everything. Now that it’s in production, the smoothness has improved noticeably, but I still feel Meta should prioritize better guides for mid-sized teams that can’t afford months of R&D. Has anyone else run into something similar?

19 Tem 16:27

When I switched to React Native with the Fabric render system, I initially saw a significant performance boost, especially after fixing the drop frame issues I used to face with the old architecture during list rendering—it was a huge relief. However, in the first few months, I struggled with TypeScript integration due to some type errors caused by props being moved around in the new system. To fix this, use the latest version of React Native Community CLI and clean up the old code with migration scripts—this ensures both stability and type safety. Meta’s improvements on the Expo side are fantastic, particularly with EAS Build simplifying the CI/CD process. But the biggest drawback of the new architecture is the compatibility issues with Native modules. If you're working on a large-scale project, definitely modernize your custom Native modules using react-native-builder-bob, or the build process will turn into a nightmare. I think Meta’s next step should be releasing tools to automate the migration of these Native modules.