Why You Don’t Have to Minify JavaScript Code in React Native Apps

React Native skips JavaScript minification in production builds because the Hermes engine compiles JS to bytecode and performs dead code elimination (DCE) at that level, making a separate minification step redundant. The difference in bundle size between minified and non-minified JS is minimal (21.79 MB vs 21.62 MB in a real-world test). To verify that dead code is actually eliminated, you can decompile Hermes bytecode back to readable JS using the hermes-dec tool, allowing direct inspection of the final bundle.