React Native Weekly #42 Expo Modules 2.0 Preview, React Native 0.88 Optimizations, Hermes-Compatible JS Engine and more

Expo Modules 2.0 Early Preview Released#

An early preview of Expo Modules 2.0—the next-generation native module specification—has been released for iOS, allowing developers to write native modules as standard Swift classes with annotations. It reportedly achieves method calls up to 14.5x faster compared to the Expo SDK 55 generation. Alongside this, a Claude Code skill has also been released to automatically migrate Swift code written for Expo Modules 1.0 to the 2.0 format. https://twitter.com/expo/status/2097362094564024574

Inline Optimization Plugin Coming to React Native 0.88.x#

The upcoming React Native 0.88.x is set to introduce an optimization plugin that inlines conditional branches such as Platform.OS. Thanks to dead code elimination, bundle sizes are expected to shrink by 17.76 KB on iOS and 19.61 KB on Android. https://twitter.com/tell_me_mur/status/2097352229833379960

Unique Features of Mobile Automation Agent Argent Shared#

Software Mansion shared details about Argent, their mobile automation tool, highlighting support for Apple TV and Android TV alongside multi-touch gestures and batch processing. It also features the ability to inspect WebView DOMs and native view hierarchies. https://twitter.com/swmansion/status/2096974561971523981

agent-device 0.21 to Add Cropping Feature#

The upcoming version 0.21 of the mobile automation tool agent-device is set to add screenshot cropping via a —crop-on option. Capturing only the targeted component under inspection reportedly helps reduce token consumption. https://twitter.com/thymikee/status/2095860836371681783

Uniwind Pro Adds Support for Tailwind CSS 4.3.3#

An update to Uniwind Pro has been released, introducing support for Tailwind CSS 4.3.3 and theme switching transitions. It also adds support for react-freeze and Suspense, alongside a revamped caching architecture. https://twitter.com/jpudysz/status/2095816780501393809

Screen Transition Animation Library react-native-screen-choreography Released#

react-native-screen-choreography, a library designed to coordinate screen transition animations across multiple elements, has been released. https://twitter.com/dorian__mazur/status/2095504618339897665

React Native Plain Text 0.8.2 Released#

Text rendering library React Native Plain Text 0.8.2 has been released, adding support for animating text using React Native’s built-in Animated API as well as Reanimated. https://twitter.com/mdj_dev/status/2095501646864261264

Concept for a Lightweight ~1–1.5 MB JS Engine with Hermes Compatibility Layer#

Specifications were revealed for a lightweight JavaScript engine for React Native and Expo with a binary size of roughly 1–1.5 MB. Thanks to a Hermes compatibility layer, existing JSI libraries can run as-is, and it is also designed to support React Native DevTools. https://twitter.com/ammarahm_ed/status/2095521046439071772

One More Thing#

Expo Modules 2.0 delivers a huge performance boost, and on top of that the API has gotten a lot simpler—pretty impressive! Lately, Expo has been actively pulling native capabilities into React Native, and situations where “React Native falls short of native in performance or UI/UX” seem to be disappearing bit by bit. I’m really looking forward to what’s coming next!