Intro

Grabowski says a community survey gathered feedback on what developers disliked about React Native. The responses were grouped into developer experience, community support, and performance. The React Native Community GitHub organization was created to move discussions into public view.

The team is focusing on upgrades, debugging, and documentation. Upgrade Helper shows changes between versions, while autolinking handles native dependencies through CocoaPods and Gradle. Upcoming debugging improvements include on-device debugging with Hermes, Flipper integration, and Fast Refresh, which was enabled by default in the 61 release candidate.

The Lean Core initiative moved modules such as WebView and AsyncStorage into the React Native Community organization. WebView merged more than 100 pull requests in its first month as a separate project, and extracted projects together merged over 800. Grabowski says the React Native backlog fell from almost 300 pull requests to around 50 as submissions rose from 3.5 to 7 per day.

Grabowski highlights Hermes, a JavaScript engine optimized for React Native on mobile, and Metro’s inline requires, which load modules when needed. He reports that Hermes improved time to interaction by two seconds and reduced an application’s size by 90 megabytes. He closes by crediting community contributions and partner support for React Native’s progress.