At React Conf, 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.

In this blogpost we want to walk you through what they are in detail and what they mean for you as a React Native developer starting a new project.

Today we're releasing React Native 0.74! This release adds Yoga 3.0, Bridgeless by default under the New Architecture, batched onLayout updates (New Architecture), and Yarn 3 as the default package manager for new projects.

We are also removing deprecated APIs, with the removal of PropTypes and breaking changes to PushNotificationIOS. On Android, SDK 23 (Android 6.0) is now the minimum supported version.

Highlights​

• Yoga 3.0
• New Architecture: Bridgeless by Default
• New Architecture: Batched onLayout Updates
• Yarn 3 for New Projects

Breaking Changes​

• Android Minimum SDK Bump (Android 6.0)
• API Changes to PushNotificationIOS (Deprecated)
• Removal of Deprecated PropTypes
• Removal of Flipper React Native Plugin
• Other Breaking Changes

Today we're releasing React Native 0.73! This release adds improvements to debugging with Hermes, stable symlink support, Android 14 support, and new experimental features. We are also deprecating legacy debugging features, and are releasing the next pillar of the New Architecture: Bridgeless Mode!

Highlights​

• Debugging Improvements
• Stable Symlink Support in Metro
• Kotlin Template on Android
• Android 14 Support
• New Architecture Updates
• Deprecated Debugging Features

Breaking Changes​

• Babel Package Renames
• Other Breaking Changes
• React Native CLI Changes
• Deprecated @types/react-native

Today we’re releasing 0.72!

This release adds highly requested features for Metro, better error handling, and other developer experience improvements. So much of this work was prioritized from your feedback on the 2022 community survey -- thank you to all those that participated!

Highlights​

• New Metro Features
• Developer Experience Improvements
• Moving New Architecture Updates

Breaking Changes​

• Deprecated Component Removals
• Package Renames

With the release of React Native 0.72, Metro — our JavaScript build tool — now includes beta support for the package.json "exports" field. When enabled, it adds the following functionality:

• React Native projects will work with more npm packages out-of-the-box
• New capabilities for packages to define their API and target React Native
• Some breaking changes to package resolution (in edge cases)

In this post we'll cover how Package Exports works, and what these changes mean for you as a React Native app developer or package maintainer.

Now that 0.71 is available, we want to share some key information about the incident that broke Android builds for all React Native versions while releasing the first 0.71 release candidate for React Native & Expo Android builds on November 4th, 2022.

The contributors who helped tackle the incident recently attended a post-mortem meeting to discuss in detail what happened, what we all learned from it, and what actions we are going to take to avoid similar outages in the future.

Today we’re releasing React Native version 0.71! This is a feature-packed release including:

• TypeScript by default
• Simplifying layouts with Flexbox Gap
• Web-inspired props for accessibility, styles, and events
• Restoring PropTypes
• Developer Experience Improvements
• New Architecture Updates

In this post we’ll cover some of the highlights of 0.71.

With the release of 0.71, React Native is investing in the TypeScript experience with the following changes:

• New app template is TypeScript by default
• TypeScript declarations shipped with React Native
• React Native documentation is TypeScript First

In this post we’ll cover what these changes mean for you as a TypeScript or Flow user.

Today we are sharing an experimental cross-platform pointer API for React Native. We’ll go over motivations, how it works, and its benefits to React Native users. There are instructions on how to enable and we’re excited to hear your feedback!

It’s been over a year since we shared our many platform vision on the wins of building beyond mobile and how it sets a higher bar for all platforms. During this time, we've increased our investments in React Native for VR, Desktop, and Web. With differences in hardware and interactions on these platforms, it raised the question of how React Native should holistically handle input.

After years of pandemic and online-only events, we really felt it was time to bring the Core Contributors of React Native together!

That’s why at the beginning of September, we gathered some of the active core contributors of React Native, library maintainers, and the Meta’s React Native and Metro teams to the Core Contributor Summit 2022. Callstack hosted the Summit in their HQ in Wrocław, Poland, as a part of the React Native EU conference happening at the same time.

Together with the React Native core team, we devised a series of workshops in which the attendees could participate. The topics were:

• ​​React Native Codegen & TypeScript Support
• ​​React Native New Architecture Library Migration
• ​​React Native Monorepo
• Metro Web and Ecosystem Alignment
• Metro Simplified Release Workflow

We were impressed by the amount of knowledge-sharing and collaboration over those two days. In this blog post, we’d like to give you a sneak peek of the results of this gathering.