Platforms

Summary

• [2015mar] iOS: The framework was first announced and open-sourced for iOS at the React.js Conf in March 2015.
• [2015sep] Android: Official support for Android was released later in the same year, making it a cross-platform solution.

• [2015] React Native Web 🌍 Began as a project by Nicolas Gallagher to create web apps using React Native components for Twitter's Progressive Web App.
• [2016] React Native Qt 🚫 This project aimed to use Qt's QML to bring React Native to desktop environments, forked from the unmaintained React Native Ubuntu. GitHub repository activity suggests development around 2016 and 2017.
• [2016apr] React Native Windows / UWP 🚫 Initial support for Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP) was released by Microsoft in April 2016.
• [2017] Valence Native 🚫 A community effort to bring the React Native developer experience to desktop apps using native tools instead of a full browser environment. Its repository shows commits dating from 2017.
• [2017] React Native DOM 🚫 An experimental, alternative web port of React Native, distinct from React Native for Web. Its repository shows commits from 2017.
• [2018] React Native Turbolinks 🚫 A wrapper for building hybrid apps using Turbolinks 5. The project's first commit on GitHub was in 2018.
• [2020may] React Native for Windows + macOS 🤝 Microsoft released the first official preview of React Native for Windows and macOS, aligning with the release of React Native 0.62.
• [2020oct] React Native tvOS 🌍 Community support for tvOS, enabling apps for Apple TV and Android TV, existed by at least October 2020.
• [2021dec] React Native Skia 🌍 The first alpha version was released, allowing React Native to use the Skia Graphics Engine as a renderer for 2D graphics.
• [2022jun] Alita 🚫 A React framework for mobile apps based on umi.
• [2024jan] React Native visionOS 🤝 A dedicated community platform for Apple's visionOS began supporting new command-line interface (CLI) commands, just before the visionOS operating system's official release in February 2024.

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iOS [2015mar]

• iOS SDK and UIKit: React Native for iOS interacts with native UIKit components for rendering the user interface, resulting in a native look and feel.
• Platform-specific APIs: Developers can access iOS-specific APIs and features, such as ARKit or HealthKit, by writing custom native modules in Swift or Objective-C that bridge to the JavaScript code.
• Hardware APIs: Support for hardware features like the camera and GPS is provided through native modules.
• Third-party libraries: The framework supports the integration of external libraries and SDKs through CocoaPods for advanced functionalities.
• Flexbox layout: While not a native API itself, the Flexbox-based layout system translates to native UI layout capabilities on iOS, simplifying responsive design.
• Performance tooling: Access to native performance tools like Xcode's Instruments allows developers to identify and optimize bottlenecks.

Android [2015sep]

• Android SDK: React Native for Android renders native Android components, ensuring a native appearance and performance.
• Platform-specific APIs: Developers can use custom native modules written in Java or Kotlin to access Android-specific APIs for advanced or specialized features.
• Hardware APIs: Similar to iOS, access to hardware APIs like the camera and GPS is available.
• Edge-to-edge support: Recent versions of React Native automatically support the edge-to-edge display required by modern Android APIs.
• Predictive back gesture: The framework supports the Android 16 predictive back gesture by default, with an option to customize the behavior using the BackHandler API.
• Performance tooling: Access to native performance tools is available for performance analysis and optimization.

React Native Web 🌍 [2015]

• React DOM: React Native Web is a compatibility layer that renders components using React DOM, which in turn uses standard browser DOM APIs.
• Standard Web APIs: The platform uses native DOM APIs to implement features, improving in performance and functionality as the web platform evolves.
• Web-based components: Browser-compatible implementations of core React Native components such as View, Text, Image, and ScrollView are provided.
• Gestures and interactions: It provides a high-level gesture system and support for various input methods (touch, mouse, keyboard).
• Accessibility: It supports different devices and input modes by rendering semantic HTML tags for improved accessibility.
• Web-specific limitations: Some mobile hardware APIs (e.g., accelerometer) are not accessible in the browser, and not all core components are implemented.

React Native for Windows + macOS 🤝 [2020may]

• Universal Windows Platform (UWP): The Windows implementation provides React Native support for the Windows SDK, allowing the building of native apps for Windows 10 and higher.
• Cocoa: The macOS implementation uses the Cocoa framework to build native macOS apps.
• Desktop-specific APIs: Supports platform-specific user experiences like keyboard shortcuts and multi-window handling.
• Community modules: Relies on a growing list of community-supported modules that target Windows and macOS.
• Native module integration: Developers can integrate existing native code into their projects.
• Network info: The NetInfo module supports both Windows and macOS.

React Native tvOS 🌍 [2020oct]

• Apple TV OS SDK: As a fork of the main React Native repository, it is tailored to support Apple TV features. It shares much of the native code with the iOS platform.
• Android TV SDK: It is also adapted to run on Android TV devices.
• Focus management: The library includes specific TV support for handling focus management, which is crucial for remote navigation.
• Touchables: Provides access to touchable controls adapted for a TV interface.
• Platform detection: Offers specific Platform APIs, such as Platform.isTVOS, for targeting Apple TV specifically.
• SDK features: Supports standard TV features while suppressing incompatible APIs like web views or status bars.

React Native Skia 🌍 [2021dec]

• Skia Graphics Engine: This is the primary API. It provides a graphics engine used by browsers like Chrome and Firefox, and mobile platforms like Android.
• Declarative API: The recommended approach uses a declarative API as a React Native Renderer.
• Imperative API (JSI): An imperative API backed by JavaScript Interface (JSI) is also available for library developers.
• Native Buffers API: An advanced API created with platform-specific GPU APIs (Metal for iOS, OpenGL for Android) for efficient graphics rendering from different data sources.
• WebGPU (future): Plans are in place to modernize the architecture with a unified WebGPU 3D API to enable advanced graphics libraries like Three.js.
• 2D graphics: A rich set of APIs for 2D graphics is available, with drawing features completed in the 1.0 release.

React Native visionOS 🤝 [2024jan]

• visionOS SDK: A dedicated platform for Apple's visionOS that unlocks the full capabilities of the spatial computing SDK.
• RealityKit: Allows developers to display 3D objects within the immersive environment.
• ARKit: Exposes APIs for augmented reality experiences.
• Immersive Spaces: Offers the ability to create and manage immersive spaces and multi-window apps.
• SwiftUI lifecycle: Uses the SwiftUI lifecycle with @UIApplicationDelegateAdaptor, allowing access to the full visionOS SDK.
• Hover effect: Provides a custom visionos_hoverEffect prop on View components to manage hover effects.
• Compatibility mode distinction: Unlike running in a compatibility mode, this platform provides transparent, native-looking UI elements.