We are bringing Node-API to React Native to simplify native module development. Learn how this ABI-stable, cross-runtime system can unlock faster builds, better maintainability, and broader ecosystem interoperability.

Callstack Blog

Callstack and community contributors are bringing Node-API (the ABI-stable native module system from Node.js) to React Native. Node-API allows native code to interface with JavaScript in a runtime-independent way and is already used in Node.js, Deno, and Bun. The key benefits include: distributing native modules as prebuilts to dramatically reduce build times (potentially down to 7 seconds), access to a broad ecosystem of existing Node-API modules and language bindings (C++, Rust, Swift, Go, Zig, C#), and better code sharing between web and React Native. The implementation requires building Hermes from source with a patched version (currently supporting RN 0.79.1/0.79.2), with full upstream support expected once the Hermes PR is merged. Currently iOS and Android are supported. The project is open source and seeking contributors.

Announcing Node-API Support for React Native