The bridge between JavaScript and native code in React Native impacts data transmission and UI updates significantly. In large-scale applications, this bridge's latency can lead to performance drops. How can we improve the bridge's data packaging, asynchronous messaging, and UI thread management? Which architectural approaches or code optimizations reduce this issue the most? What are your experiences on this?
How do we optimize the bridge performance in React Native applications?
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Yeah, I'm very familiar with the bridge overhead issue from a big project where we managed to cut UI response time by nearly 30% by optimizing the bridge communication specifically. The key move was reducing the number of messages between the JavaScript and native threads: instead of sending each event immediately, we batched the data and only forwarded it via `NativeModules` or `TurboModules` in chunks. Introducing `TurboModules` and the JavaScript Interface (JSI really helped speed up async communication since calls no longer had to deal with the classic JSON serialization overhead.
On the JavaScript side, I also scheduled UI updates with `InteractionManager.runAfterInteractions` and `useCallback` to prevent heavy tasks from blocking the UI thread. For native-side calculations, I moved critical logic into C++ modules and executed them directly on the UI thread via `react-native-reanimated`, which basically eliminated the need for bridge crossing. Another trick was setting `enableTurboModules` in `metro.config.js` and enabling `Hermes`—both helped cut latency further. If you combine these strategies, you can seriously boost bridge performance, even in large-scale apps.