Best of React Native — April 2026

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    Article
    Avatar of react_nativeReact Native·7w

    New Animation Backend, TextInput Selection Data, New Jest Preset Package · React Native

    React Native 0.85 is now available with several notable changes. The headline feature is the new Shared Animation Backend, built with Software Mansion, which powers both Animated and Reanimated and now allows animating Flexbox/layout props with the native driver. TextInput onChange events now include selection data. The Jest preset has been extracted into a dedicated @react-native/jest-preset package, requiring a one-line config change. Metro gains TLS/HTTPS support for development. DevTools improvements include multiple simultaneous CDP connections and native macOS tabs. Breaking changes include dropped support for EOL Node.js versions (v21, v23, and pre-20.19.4), removal of StyleSheet.absoluteFillObject, and various Android/iOS legacy architecture cleanups. The release includes 604 commits from 58 contributors.

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    Article
    Avatar of callstack-blogCallstack Blog·6w

    Agent React DevTools: Debug React Apps with AI Agents

    Callstack has released Agent React DevTools, a CLI that gives AI agents direct access to React DevTools internals — including the component tree, state, profiling data, renders, and performance hotspots. Unlike UI tree inspection alone, this enables AI agents to understand why an app behaves a certain way, not just what it looks like. It integrates as a skill for AI agents and supports React and React Native apps. Integration with third-party plugins via Rozenite is also available, with plans to unify both into a single CLI.

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    Article
    Avatar of twirThis Week In React·7w

    This Week In React #276: Next.js, Boneyard, MUI, React Router, Ink, shadcn, Docusaurus, Comark, Forms, Shaders

    Weekly roundup covering React and React Native ecosystem news. React highlights include Boneyard (auto-generated skeleton screens), Ink 7.0 (React CLI renderer with React 19.2 support), Material UI 9.0, Mantine 9.0, React Hook Form 7.72 with form-level validation, Docusaurus 3.10, React Router 7.14 with Vite 8 support, and a new Comark markdown parser. React Native 0.85 ships with a new Shared Animation Backend (enabling native driver for layout props), DevTools improvements for simultaneous CDP connections, and Metro TLS support. Also covered: ViewTransition support for RN Fabric (in progress), Skia Graphite pre-release, RN Windows 0.82, and the axios npm supply chain compromise. Other JS ecosystem news includes JSIR (Google's JavaScript IR proposal), esbuild 0.28, ESLint 10.2, and Ky 2.0.

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    Article
    Avatar of twirThis Week In React·5w

    This Week In React #278: React Email, TSRX, ESLint plugin, Rspack RSC, TanStack, Hook Form

    Weekly React ecosystem roundup covering React Email 6.0 (consolidated package with embeddable editor), VisionCamera v5 (Nitro Modules rewrite, modular architecture), TypeScript 7.0 Beta (Go rewrite, ~10x faster), Rspack 2.0 (experimental RSC support), TanStack Store 0.11, React Hook Form 7.73, ESLint Plugin React Hooks 7.1, Expo's $45M Series B, Node.js 24.15 (require(esm) stable), Bun 1.3.13, and Hono Node.js Adapter 2.0 (2.3x faster).

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    Article
    Avatar of twirThis Week In React·6w

    This Week In React #277: TanStack RSC, React2Dos, Next.js, MUI, Base UI, Aria, StyledComponents, Storm

    Weekly React and React Native newsletter covering TanStack's experimental RSC implementation, a new React DoS vulnerability (CVE-2026-23869) affecting Server Functions requiring upgrade to React 19.2.5 or Next.js 16.2.3, MUI v9 release, Styled Components 6.4 with RSC support, and Base UI 1.4. On the React Native side: Pulsar haptics library from Software Mansion, Nitro Fetch 1.0 as a fast fetch replacement with HTTP/3 support, RN 0.85.1, Metro 0.84.3, and Agent React DevTools for AI-assisted debugging. Other highlights include Chrome 148 Beta with HTML-in-Canvas, Bun 1.3.12, and Syncpack 14.0 rewritten in Rust.

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    Article
    Avatar of whitespectreWhitespectre·6w

    Open-Source CMS as a Backend Platform: What It Replaces, and What's Still Custom

    A hybrid backend architecture pattern using an open-source CMS as a platform for a content-heavy mobile app is examined. The CMS handles collections, REST/GraphQL APIs, admin UI, database migrations, background jobs, and TypeScript types automatically. Custom engineering is reserved for composite endpoints, runtime personalization, and AI chatbot orchestration built on top of CMS hooks. A monorepo with shared TypeScript definitions between the CMS backend and React Native client catches schema mismatches at compile time. The post outlines when this pattern fits (frequent content model changes, small teams, predictable retrieval) and when it doesn't (highly relational data, mostly custom business logic, mature internal tooling already in place).

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