I Tried Snap’s Valdi – Is It Better Than React Native?

Snap (the company behind Snapchat) has released Valdi, a cross-platform UI framework that compiles declarative TypeScript components directly to native views on iOS, Android, and macOS — no web views or JavaScript bridges. Valdi has been used internally at Snapchat for eight years and is now in public beta. Key features include automatic view recycling, independent component re-rendering, a C++ layout engine, viewport-aware rendering, built-in animations, gesture recognition, worker threads, and a built-in testing framework. A React Native developer walks through getting started with Valdi, bootstrapping a project, hot reloading, creating components, and styling with Yoga. The setup process has rough edges — slow initial builds, cryptic errors, and some Android NDK issues — but overall the framework feels solid. The conclusion is that React Native with Expo remains the production-ready choice, but Valdi is a promising beta worth watching.