React Native 0.81 brings platform consistency and faster compiles

The latest version of the React Native framework is less about flashy new APIs and more about keeping pace with Android and iOS platform advancements, while also delivering some quality-of-life improvements that developers have been asking for.

Perhaps the most pressing change for developers in React Native 0.81 is the framework’s alignment with the upcoming Android 16. Apps will now default to an edge-to-edge display, a design choice that is no longer optional.

This design move by Google creates a domino effect. To properly support it, React Native is finally deprecating the old component. For years, it was a helpful, if limited, tool for avoiding notches on iOS, but it was never truly a cross-platform solution and is incompatible with the new edge-to-edge mandate on Android.

Most teams have already migrated to more powerful libraries like react-native-safe-area-context, which is now the recommended path forward. Using the old component will now show a warning, with its full removal planned for a future version.

The Android changes don’t stop there. Predictive back gestures are now on by default, so you’ll want to thoroughly test your app’s navigation. While the standard BackHandler API should work fine, anyone with custom native back-handling code has some homework to do.

It’s also a good time to start thinking about responsive layouts for large screens, a feature you can opt out of for now, but which will likely become essential by the time Android 17 rolls around.

If you’ve ever found yourself staring at a loading bar while your iOS app compiles, this next feature is for you. A collaboration between Meta and Expo has produced experimental support for precompiled iOS builds. The headline feature is a potential compile time reduction of up to ten times for many React Native projects. It’s still experimental and not on by default, but the promise of faster development cycles is a great reason to give it a try.

The team has also done a bit of housekeeping. Support for the JavaScriptCore (JSC) engine has officially moved out of the core framework and into a separate, community-maintained package. This won’t affect the majority of developers using the default Hermes engine, but for those who rely on JSC, it’s a required migration step for this upgrade.

This React Native framework release also brings some welcome improvements to debugging. Uncaught JavaScript errors will now provide a much richer context in DevTools; including the original error message, stack trace, and even an Owner Stack to show which component was responsible. This should mean less time spent hunting down bugs and more time building features.

As with any major update, there are some breaking changes to navigate. You’ll need to ensure your development and CI environments are running at least Node.js version 20 and Xcode 16.1 to build your projects.

Library authors, in particular, will need to pay attention to a new RN_SERIALIZABLE_STATE macro in the latest React Native version, which requires a small update to custom CMake files to ensure C++ code compiles correctly.

See also: Python targets phantom dependencies threat with SBOM proposal

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