using a react native framework, such as Expo, is now the recommended way to create new react native apps. You can read more about our Official Guidelines and our latest blog post, or you watch this video. We're going to break it all down because this is a huge, huge change. For those who don't know, react native was not easy to set up back in the day, and by back in the day, I mean honestly up until everyone started using Expo. And even then, the people who weren't, it was a rough time. Setting up react native involves not just setting up a JavaScript project, but setting up a JavaScript project using an obscure bundle called Metro, and also setting up an iOS project and an Android project using the native tools for both, and then creating the bindings and the relationship between all of those things. It's miserable, and I've had enough of a rough time throughout my career getting that working that I gave up long ago and moved to Expo, and it's been a great thing. There's a reason that when we support upload thing with react

native we do it almost entirely through Expo because anything else seemed like suicide. Which, by the way, if you're a React Native Dev and you want to add file up to your service upload thing, is the best way to do it. If somehow this isn't the best way to do file upload your mobile app, hit us up and we'll fix that. Anyways, sorry for the self-plug. We're here to talk about React Native. So what's going on here? Why are they recommending a framework at React Comp? We updated our guidance on the best tool to get started building React Native apps, a React Native framework, a toolbox with all the necessary APIs to let you build production-ready apps using React Native. Frameworks such as Expo is now the recommended approach to create new apps. I love that they said such as Expo here. They're not hiding it. If you're not familiar with the drama that we've already had with React for web, Create React App went through something similar. If we go to the React Dev site for the actual React docs, we search for

framework. They have a whole section here for how they recommend starting a new React project. If you want to build a new app or a new website fully with React, we recommend picking one of the React-powered frameworks popular in the community. You can use React without a framework; however, we found that most apps and sites eventually build solutions to common problems like code splitting, routing, data fetching, and generating HTML. These problems are common to all UI libraries, not just React. They recommend you start with a framework because Create React App was not—it was a mess, and especially with new things like server components and deep routing data loading patterns becoming more and more common in React, having a framework that can support those things without your team having to build them yourself is effectively essential. I heard somebody earlier in chat mentioned that they had multiple employees at their company that's job is just dealing with Parcel, the bundler. These frameworks all handle those things for you. You don't have to think about bundlers anywhere near as much if you're using Next or Remix or V or any of these.

other tools they just kind of take this problem away so they recommend on react that you look at nextjs or remix. They need to remove Gatsby from this because it's like formally dead at this point, but also they have Expo in here for Native apps, and they don't put V in here sadly because it's not a full stack framework, it's just a bundler, but you get the point. I'm just happy that create react app isn't in here anymore because it shouldn't be, and the equivalent is happening with react native where create react native is no longer recommended at all. They tell you explicitly that you should use a framework such as Expo as the recommended approach. So why do they care? Why are we doing this? Well, first we need to answer what is a react native framework, which might be a good question for a lot of y'all. I mean us deep Expo devs know, but if you don't, why would we need a framework? We don't need a server, we don't need all these fancy bundlers.

and things. What's the importance of a framework in React Native? Well, if you've been building production apps for long enough, you almost certainly know that there's a set of common problems that we need to solve sooner than later when building any application on either web or native. You probably want your users to navigate through different screens, fetch data, store the state of your user, and more. But for Native apps, there's even more to deal with. You need tools to upgrade the native code between React Native versions. You need to manage compatible versions of all your dependencies, and you even need to deal with the NA of build tools. Don't get me started on Xcode or Android Studio, please. It's rough. It's real rough in these days. Even I was talking to some people who are deeper in the Xcode world, and the way it was described to me is Xcode is still based on the NextStep code base. If you don't know too much Apple history, NextStep was the operating system that Steve Jobs built at his company Next after he got fired.

from Apple because he knew that Apple had an operating system and needed something better. And the only way they could get that is if they bought him. So he built the whole computer company just to build the operating system that Apple needed so that Apple would be forced by him so that they could have the operating system. Genius move. One of those like 4D chess things that Jobs always did. And yeah, Xcode is still based on the dev tools for NextStep and they've just kept adding things on top. Like Xcode is not a tool where they deprecate, which is why it's a massive bundle, it's why it's so slow and miserable, and the chaos of that world is where it's at. G, yeah, no, Xcode is miserable. Oh, that's a great chat from YouTube. Crazy enough, Xcode is so user friendly if you hate your users and you want to make them suffer. Totally agree. Anyways, it takes a village to bring an app from idea to production. Without the right tools, I mean, it takes a lot of

work to do it with the right tools too, but the village is just supporting the tools. We want you to focus on writing beautiful applications and features for your use and not just solving those common problems over and over again. That's why we believe that the best way for you to experience React Native is through a framework that offers a toolbox with all the necessary tools you need to build production-ready applications. We found that you're either using a framework or you're building your own framework. I love this line. This has become part of like the React ethos, and generally the web dev ecosystem is embracing this too. Even places like Solid have acknowledged that yeah, if you don't have something like Solid Star or in Spel, you don't have something like Spelt Kit. You end up reinventing all those things yourself anyways. So what if we had a good enough common solution so we're not reinventing everything. We can just build. It's like almost the PHP-ification of JavaScript where we're realizing these tools are valuable. They shouldn't provide everything, but they

should provide the common things so that you can get back to work and plug the right Legos. And on top later on, there's nothing wrong with building your own framework, though, by crafting your own solutions for routing, navigation, deployment, and so on. Major corporations like Meta and Microsoft build their own frameworks internally to integrate deeply into their existing Brownfield applications, but we believe that most people will be better off by using an existing framework. This is an important point too because a lot of React Native apps aren't starting as React Native apps; they're starting as existing old ancient Native apps. I've heard crazy things like the Instagram app from a cold start takes like a day to build, like over 24 hours, actual insanity. If you also have to add a bunch of additional things to plug React Native in as a shim in there, that's rough. If you can get that working with Expo, awesome, you should do that, but for those who don't have those opportunities, God, it can be miserable. It can be real, real miserable. And that's why these things

are so important because for those who are Green Field we need a happy path, but also those who aren't Greenfield they're kind of and the fact that new apps and ancient apps had the same Dev experience with react native meant everyone was suffering, but at the very least starting new apps is way better now be nice to have happier pths for integrating into existing apps because a lot of companies want to make it so certain teams can move faster, and if you have a web team that's doing a great job on like the store for something like Instagram, you want to add that to the native apps, but you don't want to hire a bunch of IOS and Android Engineers to just do those two features and keep them all in sync. Well, if you could have the react devs contribute that feature in react native, that's really beneficial. That's why these companies have teams building both react native itself and all the tools around it, which, by the way, if you don't know this, Microsoft is actually building react native for both

Windows and Mac OS, and they use it heavily in Windows 11 for things like the start menu, and most of the Xbox UI is react native as well. Just crazy. Anyways, if you've been using react on the web, you're probably familiar with the similar concept of production-grade react frameworks. That's the article we just pulled out pre-read clearly. As of today, the only recommended community framework for react native is Expo. Folks at Expo have been investing in the react native ecosystem since the early days of react native, and as of today, we believe the developer experience offered by Expo is best in class. Expo, the framework, is and will always remain free and open source, while the Expo application service is an optional paid service, which, by the way, EAS, so good. Remember earlier I was talking about how miserable Xcode is to deal with? What if you didn't have to? E is Expo hosting a bunch of Mac build machines for you, so you just hand them your react native project, give them the credentials for your Apple developer stuff, and they just

generate the app. They just give you the file to install and have a button to auto-send it to the App Store. The amount of I have dealt with in my life that Expo has turned into two clicks is unbelievable. It feels just like when they first use verel after you lived an FTP deployments for your whole life. You just click two buttons and it builds. It's so good. You can actually build an iOS app without having an Xcode installation on your computer. Hell, you can build an iOS app now on Windows. It's so good. I see people in chat saying that they actually rent a Mac only to build their iOS Progressive Web App shell in Xcode because they don't own a Mac and Es or E would be so much cheaper. Yep, it's so good. I know people who aren't even on React Native that are using E just because it's one of the best ways to build mobile apps. Katie did a great talk at React Comp this year all about why Expo is so good for React Native devs. They also have a getting started

page too for those who are interested. Links in the description, you can find all these from there. So how will Frameworks actually affect you? Well, if you're already using a recommended framework like Expo, you're good to go. If you'd like to migrate your existing app to Expo, you can find instructions on the official Expo website. They offer many benefits, such as an easier way to upgrade your React Native versions, better developer experience, and much more. React Native version upgrades are still hell, not going to pretend otherwise. I will continue to talk very positively about React Native as it enables both a great developer experience and a platform for developers to do awesome things for their users. But man, upgrading React Native versions is hell, like actual one of the most miserable things I've had to do. Half the time, I'll just initialize a new project, copy over all of the actual source code, and then fix whatever's broken from there because trying to bump things has been so miserable for me, especially when you're dealing with iOS and Android dependencies that are entirely different.

their own separate chains miserable. They also say, though, that if you can't or don't want to migrate Expo, you're fine. Use React Native without an official framework. Will continue to be supported. The tools that you've been using like React Native Community CLI template and the upgrade helper will all continue to work as usual. The React Native init command, though, has moved out of core and is now accessible via React Native Community CLI latest init. Yeah, they don't want React Native the package to have an opinion on how to initialize, so now you can just go do that. They have a bunch of further reading here for those who are curious and want to better understand these things. One more thing I'll recommend that you check out if you're into React Native and you even vaguely know what server-driven UI means. You should watch this, and if you don't know what server-driven UI is, you should go watch my other server component videos and then go watch this because Evan Bacon's Universal React Server Component stuff is so mind-blowing.

so cool. The idea of native UIs being driven from the server is not just like cool and exciting. It fundamentally changes how most software devs can build mobile apps. Right now, big companies like Facebook and Google have crazy systems they've built to allow the server to describe not just what data the UI will use, but what shape the UI should present that data in. And all of these companies have invented their own crazy syntaxes to send UI structures effectively like HTML from the server to your phone. So that if the new type of post appears on Facebook, you don't have to update your app just to see this new shape of a post. That type of server-driven stuff has been essential in Mobile Dev forever now because you don't know which version of the app a user might be on. If they're on an old version, you can't just not ship your new feature. So the server being able to tell any version of the app, Hey, this looks like this, is essential. And server components make that trivial. Server components make it so that type

of really complex architecture is now generally available to any Dev. Even a solo Dev working on a side project where previously absolute chaos. So that's exciting. Check this out. It'll be linked in the description. I'm so hyped with what XO is doing. I'm really excited for the future of react native and I hope you are too. Let me know in the comments what you're feeling. Until next time, peace nerds.

React Native Just Made A Long Overdue Change

Hi, I'm a software dev nerd mostly known for full stack TypeScript stuff. Check out me and my stack at t3.gg
