How React Native Works: Features & Benefits

React Native is one of the leading cross-platform developing frameworks nowadays. Recent research shows that 28% of developers use React Native to create mobile, desktop, and other types of apps in 2025.

React Native is valuable because of the open-source, broad spectrum of features and application area it presents. We invite you to look under the hood of the framework and find out:

• What is React Native?
• How does React Native work?
• How is the React Native development process organized?
• What are the key React Native features?
• What is the future of React Native?

We will answer these and many other questions in our article.

What is React Native?

React Native was created in 2015 by Facebook (now Meta). Developers wrote it in JavaScript after they faced the problem of rendering React web applications on mobile devices.

It gained popularity very fast for its features and capabilities. Among the React Native applications are Instagram, Facebook, Tesla, Skype, Uber Eats, Walmart, and Shopify.

Initially, the Facebook team designed React Native to create natively rendering Android, and iOS mobile apps, using React JS library. Then, thanks to the open environment of the framework, developers from all over the world contributed to it and extended its capabilities. Now, it works with major mobile platforms and Linux, macOS, Windows, etc.

How React Native works?

Before making up their mind about the use of this or that technology for their projects, businesses and their tech teams always try to find out the peculiarities of their functioning.

Thanks to having a better understanding of how this framework works, teams can make a more grounded decision about the benefits of React Native code and apps and the feasibility of using this technology in web or mobile development.

What programming language is used in React Native?

Most React Native code is written in JavaScript. But developers don’t have to stick to just JavaScript – they can also write their apps in TypeScript. Since TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, it adds static typing, which helps catch errors early. Using TypeScript instead of regular JavaScript can make apps easier to maintain and debug.

For some advanced optimizations, developers can also introduce their custom native code that can be written, for example, in Swift, Kotlin, or C++.

React Native architecture: How does React Native UI work?

The cross-platform capability of React Native becomes possible owing to its unique architecture. While it’s mainly focused on the frontend layer of an application, its architecture seamlessly interacts with both frontend and backend layers.

The core element of the React Native architecture is the Bridge. This system employs the React library to render the application on a device. Simply put, the bridge transforms the JS code into the native components and vice versa. The bridge translates JavaScript into platform-specific components.

It gets the JS call and can deal with the APIs (Kotlin, Objective C, Java), which allows the native rendering of an application. The process doesn't affect user experience because these async calls take place apart from the main thread.

However, if your app employs multiple threads and large amounts of data, this structure can cause delays.

Development process

React Native is based on React and uses a single JavaScript codebase to reuse the code on various platforms. Unlike Ionic and many other cross-platform development frameworks, React Native renders native components by invoking platform-specific APIs.

For instance, to render UI components on iOS, React Native uses either Objective C or Swift APIs. As for Android mobile applications, it will be Java or Kotlin. In fact, a developer doesn't need to know Objective C or Java to create the apps.

The React Native development process happens in JavaScript, TypeScript, and JSX. The developers can reuse significant parts (up to 100%) of the code.

Another peculiarity of React Native is its commands for component creation.

Also, features like 3d party library support, hot reload, and vast UI libraries make the development process much easier and more productive for engineers. When an application is ready, you can connect it to a cloud or local database to provide storage capacity.

Does React Native compile to native code?

Of course, while discussing with our clients how React Native works, we often talk about the specificity of handling native code in it.

React Native does not directly compile to pure native code in the way that Swift or Kotlin does.

Now, after discussing the architecture of this framework, let's briefly summarize how React Native works with native code. This will help you to get a better understanding of the process of building cross-platform apps with this framework.

• React Native uses a JavaScript engine, which relies on the JavaScript interface, to run the JS code.
• The JavaScript code communicates with native components through a bridge.
• React Native has a bridge that translates JavaScript calls into native platform-specific code.

Developers can also write custom UI component code to make their React Native apps better address the needs of potential users.

React Native features

Here, we will elaborate on React Native features that make the framework prominent.

NPM repository support

NPM (Node Package Manager) streamlines the process of building apps for multiple platforms with React Native. NPM is a repository of pre-made libraries that developers can use when working with the React Native code.

This feature makes the development process much faster, allowing React Native developers to upload the code patterns from the NPM libraries.

Code reusability

This is the core feature of any cross-platform development framework. However, the percentage of code you can reuse varies from platform to platform. In the case of React Native, you can use almost all the code throughout the different platforms. This feature saves plenty of time and reduces costs.

Flexibility

The computing language and its flexibility play a crucial part in the framework's performance and success. The more common the core language of the cross-platform development framework, the faster and easier the learning process becomes.

It means you won't have any problems training your JS developers to work with React Native. However, if you want to create a unique app faster, it makes sense to hire experienced React Native developers.

Apart from that, as we've mentioned above, React Native uses JavaScript as a base and supports TypeScript out-of-the-box. These peculiarities make the React Native platform accessible to a larger group of developers. According to the latest developer survey, JS is the most popular computing language, with around 64% of developers using it.

Strong developer community

React Native framework became popular among developers around the world almost instantly after its launch in 2015. Ever since, the community has been growing and contributing to the open-source framework, extending its functionality and making it faster.

This characteristic secures the future of the React Native cross-platform framework and makes it attractive to other developers.

3d party libraries support

Another feature that sets React Native apart from other cross-platform frameworks is its strong support for third-party libraries. Developers can tap into a vast collection of ready-to-use React components and easily integrate them into their native Android, iOS, and web apps.

By using these libraries, mobile and web development teams can make better use of their resources and streamline project development. Plus, it can significantly speed up the app development process. What is also very important to highlight is that the number of publicly available components, as well as those of popular JavaScript UI libraries that can be used in React Native, continuously growing.

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High performance in mobile environments

React Native has been working with mobile platforms from the first day of its existence. No wonder it has excellent performance with iOS and Android mobile development. As we've mentioned above, today, a lot of popular iOS and Android apps are built with Reach Native code. And it comes as no surprise.

Software engineers can reuse more React code in the mobile environment than in other different programming languages and frameworks. This makes React Native the fastest framework for building cross-platform iOS and Android apps for now.

Live & Hot reload

The HMR (Hot Module Replacement) facility allows React Native developers to change, add, and modify modules while the system is on the go. As a result, this feature streamlines the app development process in the following ways:

• Saves time by updating only the changed code;
• Retains application's state (that's lost during the full reload);
• Updates the browser as soon as modifications in the JS code are made.
  

The live reload feature of React Native allows you to see the changes on your screen as soon as you change them. This feature is especially useful for mobile app development.

Cost-effectiveness of React Native for startups & MVPs

Startups and small businesses often operate on limited budgets and tight timelines. They need to act fast but at the same time to avoid huge expenses (especially given the fact that not all investments will pay off).

React Native is a great choice for them due to its ability to reduce MVP development service costs and accelerate the launch of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that helps to test their ideas. Here's how:

1. Traditional native app development requires two separate teams to work with solutions for different platforms. As a rule, there are native iOS and native Android teams. React Native eliminates the need for separate software engineers for different apps. With React native, one team can build solutions for different platforms with one codebase.
2. With React Native, an MVP can be built in weeks instead of months compared to separate native apps. It is possible thanks to the fast prototyping enabled by this framework. Pre-built UI components, reusable code, and Hot Reloading are among the key features that contribute to this.
3. Lower maintenance costs are ensured by the fact that updates will be synchronized across both Android and iOS platforms.
4. When businesses choose React Native for their projects, it's usually easier for them to hire specialists to build their solutions. React Native relies on languages that are widely known. It is usually not very challenging to find JavaScript developers, who are good at JS coding. Moreover, many web developers can transition to React Native, which can also reduce hiring challenges.
   

Benefits of React Native apps

After answering the question "How is React Native working?", let's take a closer look at the peculiarities of React native apps. What makes them stand out from the row of other solutions?

Near-native performance

React Native web and mobile applications use native app view components, which ensure smooth UI interactions. At the same time, the speed of such apps is enhanced by the use of a JavaScript bridge. It helps them communicate with native APIs.

Consistent UI/UX across platforms

React Native guarantees a unified user experience across iOS and Android platforms. User interfaces of such apps stay responsive and adaptive.

Smaller app size with optimization

React Native can bundle only necessary components. This helps to reduce app size.

Fast UI Rendering with Virtual DOM

React Native utilizes the Virtual DOM to optimize UI updates and rendering. This approach reduces unnecessary re-renders and can ensure smooth animations.

Seamless third-party plugin integration

While React Native allows developers to build mobile applications using JavaScript code, it seamlessly bridges the gap between the JavaScript layer and the native layer (platform-specific code).

This enables apps to get access to native device functionalities. For example, your apps can be enriched with features that rely on the possibilities of smartphones' cameras, biometrics, GPS, etc. Moreover, it works well with third-party UI libraries and APIs.

Over-the-air (OTA) updates

Apps can receive live updates without requiring App Store/Play Store approvals.

The future of React Native

The Meta team, along with all the contributors from the developer community, continue upgrading the React Native environment. They add new features, widen the functionality of React Native, and expand its cross-platform capacity.

There is no doubt that with the high performance and the dedicated developer community behind it, React Native is here to stay and will continue to emerge. Currently, the React Native framework emerges in the following directions:

Performance enhancements with Fabric

Fabric is a new architecture that is designed to improve the performance and UI responsiveness of React Native apps. It offers a new rendering system for faster UI updates and reduces the bridge bottleneck between JavaScript and native modules.

Following the principles of platform-agnosticism

Platform-agnosticism is a certain app development philosophy that aims to create totally cross-platform applications. According to the concept, the ideal app is the one you can create once and use on every platform without any additional code manipulations.

Although it's not easy to achieve fully, the React Native community is continuously striving to make the framework capable of creating perfectly cross-platform applications.

Bridge simplification

The next development direction the tech community is moving towards is bridge simplification. This will enhance direct invocation between native and JavaScript and allow the creation of new debugging tools.

Extension of Async capabilities

The Async upgrade aims to enhance the asynchronous rendering of the React Native framework. This, in turn, will streamline asynchronous data handling and rendering.

Wider enterprise adoption

Today, we can observe that more and more major companies like Tesla, Shopify, Uber, and Microsoft rely on React Native. It is expected that with the further stabilization of the performance of React Native code, even more businesses will opt for it to build their scalable enterprise apps.

AI and ML support

The demand for advanced AI and ML-powered solutions is skyrocketing. And React Native can become a good choice for creating software products with such functionality. There are libraries and third-party solutions that help to make AI/ML more accessible in React Native apps.

In the future, we can expect even better support for AI-driven features like chatbots and personalization.

Conclusion

Taking into account all the technologies and features React Native represents, we can say for sure that it is a top cross-platform development framework. Developer community recognition and thousands of outstanding applications with billiards of users prove it.

With the support of Meta and thousands of contributors, React Native will definitely evolve and make the app development process easier, faster, and more enjoyable.

By the way, the Akveo developers' team is proud to add value to the community of React Native with the free and open-source UI Kitten based on the Eva Design system. Many developers saved their time, and money, by using it. You can try the Kitten and see all the benefits for yourself.

Above that, we never stop generating fresh ideas and creating custom React Native applications for our customers. We work with businesses from various domains and deeply understand the needs of different markets.

If you'd like to create your own app or get professional advice, you can find a React Native development company for help. Or just contact us. We'll use all the power of our expertise and enthusiasm to assist you.