2025-12-22 · #16
React Native Weekly #16 React Navigation 8 Alpha, Nitro Modules 30% Boost, Hermes v1 Bundle Times and more
React Navigation 8 Alpha Released#
React Navigation 8, the navigation library for React Native, has released its alpha version.
Native bottom tabs are now the default, and it adds support for retrieving parent screen state, auto-completion of parameters in static configurations, and adding history entries without screen changes via the pushParams API.
React Navigation 8 alpha is here 👀 📝 Highlights - Native Bottom Tabs by default - Access to route, navigation, & state for any parent screens - Better TypeScript types for static configuration - Push history entries without pushing screens And many more...
React Native Screens 4.19.0 Released#
React Native Screens 4.19.0 has been released, bringing updates such as support for BottomAccessory on iOS and special tab effects on Android.
React Native Screens 4.19.0 just landed! 🚀 Check release notes for more 👇 twitter.com/kafara_kacper/stat…
Header API Added to Expo Router v7#
It looks like Expo Router v7 is getting a more intuitive way to configure navigation headers. The new style involves nesting definitions for titles, menus, and more directly within the header component.
The new Expo Router v7 Header API is so elegant! 👇 It supports: - iOS 26 - Liquid Glass - Header Menus - SFSymbols - Android drawables - Vector Icons - And more 👇
Nitro Modules Gets a 30% Speed Boost#
By caching frequently accessed jsi::PropNameID values, Nitro Modules has achieved roughly a 30% performance improvement.
Nitro Modules was already known for its performance, so an additional 30% speedup is pretty impressive!
I just made Nitro 30% faster 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
React Native Pager View 8.0.0 Released#
React Native Pager View 8.0.0, which provides PagerView for both iOS and Android, has been released.
The iOS implementation has been rewritten from the ground up using SwiftUI, which reportedly resolves a large number of long-standing issues.
This change was made in collaboration with Vercel and is already being used in the v0 app.
React Native Pager View 8.0.0 is out 🎄✨ This release is a full rewrite of the iOS codebase in SwiftUI ⚡ This rewrite solves many long-standing issues in Pager View. Looking forward to your feedback!
We worked with @o_kwasniewski to rewrite react-native-pager-view in SwiftUI for @v0. It should be much smoother on iOS. You can now animate screens based on swipe position without issues. twitter.com/o_kwasniewski/stat…
Hermes v1 Expected to Dramatically Improve Bundle Times#
Hermes v1 is set to support modern JavaScript features, which should allow many Babel plugins to be dropped. As a result, bundle times are expected to improve significantly. Expo SDK 55 is planned to support Hermes v1 — likely in an experimental capacity.
~65.4% of transform time in @Expo is spent removing common language features that aren't supported in the Hermes engine. Upgrading to Hermes v1—in SDK 55—means all of the following transforms could be removed (assuming block scoping and async generators are enabled). This is
React Native ExecuTorch 0.6.0 Released#
React Native ExecuTorch 0.6.0, which enables running AI models on-device, has been released. This release brings major performance improvements along with support for voice activity detection, Stable Diffusion, and quantized Whisper.
🤖 React Native ExecuTorch v0.6.0 recently dropped and it’s packed with goodies! 👉 Significant performance improvements 👉 Voice activity detection 👉 Stable Diffusion 👉 Quantized Whisper Definitely time to unlock some new capabilities in your React Native apps 😉
Expo SDK 55 Coming in January?#
It looks like Expo SDK 55 will be dropping early next year.
@gronxxb @expo Super good to see this! SDK 55 comes early next year, it won’t hurt to wait a bit
One More Thing#
The holiday season has kicked off overseas this week. The Expo team is also taking a break from December 17th through January 4th.
Expo SDK 55 is shaping up to have a ton of new features and changes — can’t wait for it to land!