2025-10-16 · #6
React Native Weekly #6 React Native 0.82, Liquid Glass Skia, Expo Tailwind Support and more
React Conf 2025#
React Conf 2025 took place on October 7–8 (local time), covering React, React Native, and the broader React ecosystem. This year in particular, React Native was a major topic throughout the event — you could really feel the momentum building around it.
React Conf 2025 | October 7-8 | Henderson, Nevada & online | Join us!conf.react.dev
The React Foundation Is Here#
At React Conf, it was announced that React, React Native, and the surrounding ecosystem projects will be transitioning from Meta to the newly established React Foundation. While React has always been open source with Meta at the helm, this move shifts things toward a more open and neutral governance model. Going forward, the Foundation will be supported by a wide range of companies including Amazon, Callstack, Expo, Meta, Microsoft, Software Mansion, and Vercel.
Introducing the React Foundation: The New Home for React & React NativeMeta open-sourced React over a decade ago to help developers build better user experiences. Since then, React has grown into one of the world’s most popular open source projects, powering over 50 m…Engineering at Meta
React Native 0.82#
React Native 0.82 is out!
New Architecture Only#
Since 0.76, New Architecture has been the default — but as of 0.82, it’s the only supported mode. Any settings that disable it, such as newArchEnabled=false or RCT_NEW_ARCH_ENABLED=0, will simply be ignored.
That said, the actual removal of Legacy Architecture from the React Native core is planned for the next release, 0.83, in order to minimize breaking changes.
Hermes V1 as an Experimental Opt-In#
Hermes, the JavaScript engine used in React Native, now has opt-in support for its V1 release. Hermes V1 brings improvements to bundle load time and TTI (Time to Interactive — the time from bundle load through rendering to when the app becomes interactive).
Worth noting: Hermes V1 does not yet include previously announced features like Static Hermes or JIT compilation. Those are still being tested and are planned for a future release.
2/ Hermes V1 Today we also announced Hermes V1, the next evolution of our JavaScript Engine! Hermes V1 shows a 60% avg improvement on synthetic benchmarks, includes improved modern JS support, and ships today in 0.82 as experimental.
React 19.1.1#
React Native 0.82 ships with React 19.1.1 as the default. This version fixes the behavior of useDeferredValue and startTransition inside Suspense on React Native. Previously, both would incorrectly show the fallback component when used with Suspense on React Native. In 19.1.1, they now behave consistently and as expected — matching the behavior on the web.
DOM Node APIs#
You can now interact with elements via refs in a way that mirrors the web DOM. For example, you can call getBoundingClientRect() on a ref to get an element’s size:
function MyComponent(props) {
const ref = useRef();
useEffect(() => {
const element = ref.current;
// New methods
element.parentNode;
element.parentElement;
element.childNodes;
element.children;
const bounds = element.getBoundingClientRect();
const doc = element.ownerDocument;
const maybeElement = doc.getElementById('some-view');
// Legacy methods are still available
element.measure((x, y, width, height, pageX, pageY) => {
/* ... */
});
}, []);
return ;
}For more details, see:
Nodes from refs · React Nativereactnative.devWeb Performance API#
React Native now supports web-compatible performance APIs like performance.now().
4/ Web Performance APIs and New Tooling It's easier than ever to understand your app's performance thanks to newly added Performance APIs from the web. These provide new runtime profiling capabilities, and work in both development and production builds.
This enables performance tracking within your app, and in a future version of React Native, you’ll be able to measure performance directly inside React Native DevTools.
And, coming later in React Native 0.83, you'll be able to profile and understand your app more intuitively, with native support for the Performance panel and Network panel in React Native DevTools.
According to this tweet, that feature is currently scheduled for around Christmas.
Network inspector in React Native DevTools scheduled for Christmas!
Introducing the VirtualView API#
A new experimental VirtualView component has been added to enable efficient rendering inside ScrollView.
It behaves much like a regular View component and is placed as a child of ScrollView, like this:
Hello world!
As shown in the diagram below, VirtualView automatically unmounts and frees memory when it scrolls out of the visible area. It also pre-renders as it approaches the viewport, enabling a smooth scrolling experience.
React Native already has FlatList for efficient list rendering. Here’s how VirtualView compares:
- FlatList — Prioritizes smooth scrolling; elements may appear before rendering is fully complete, which can result in brief blank frames.
ScrollView + VirtualView
- Blocks the main thread to ensure rendering is complete before display
- No blank frames
- However, if child rendering is expensive, frame drops are possible
Uniwind#
From the team behind React Native Unistyles comes Uniwind — a new library that lets you style your app using Tailwind-style syntax.
I’m thrilled to announce that Uniwind has reached public beta! 💨 We’ve been waiting for this moment for months, and it’s finally here! A full blog post is coming soon, but I couldn’t wait to share it with you 😇 👉 github.com/Unistyles-OSS/uniwi…
For more details, check out this Zenn article:
NativeWindの対抗馬？ハイパフォーマンスのUniwindでReact NativeをスタイリングZenn
Liquid Glass with Skia#
William Candillon, one of the developers behind React Native Skia, posted a video showing how to achieve a Liquid Glass-style effect using Skia.
CSS Parser and Tailwind Support Coming to Expo#
Expo is working on native support for CSS and Tailwind. This means you’ll be able to use Tailwind-style APIs for styling in Expo without needing a third-party library like NativeWind.
We've been working with @mark__lawlor to add native CSS, and vanilla Tailwind support to @Expo for native apps! I styled my code editor prototype entirely with it—the speed and quality is unmatched ⚡️ Blog post with more details coming soon! twitter.com/Danny_H_W/status/1…
One More Thing#
What a week — React Conf brought so much to talk about! The launch of the React Foundation feels like genuinely great news for the long-term sustainability of both React and React Native. And it’s hard not to notice that most of the companies backing the Foundation are also big React Native advocates — the momentum behind React Native in the broader React ecosystem is really something right now.
Here’s hoping React Native continues to gain traction across more and more companies around the world! 🚀