What Is React Native?

React Native is a framework that allows you to build native mobile apps using JavaScript. Normally, you’d need to program your mobile app using Java (for Android) and Swift/Obj-C (for iOS). React Native removes that requirement, leading to fully functional apps on both platforms in much less time and using just one coding language.

Is React Native an entirely new invention? Not exactly. The framework was developed only a few years ago, by a social media company you may have heard of…Facebook is the company behind both ReactJS and React Native. In fact, Facebook first created React to build the social platform we all love to hate. After further development, Facebook released ReactJS for the web as open source.

But Facebook was still struggling with their mobile app. They needed to maintain two codebases: one for iOS, one for Android. Features implemented in Swift on iOS had to be implemented separately in Java on Android, leading to work duplication and asymmetrical apps.

React Native neatly solves that problem.

Coming on the heels of ReactJS, the purpose of React Native was to facilitate the creation of mobile apps. It’s simple: if you can code an app once in JavaScript and deploy it both to Android and iOS, your life gets a lot easier.

If you’ve ever used the official Facebook app on Android or iOS, you’ve seen React Native in action. (Same goes for the mobile Airbnb app.)