React Native Blog | Technical Articles & Insights

10/3/2025

Cross-Platform TV Apps With React Native for tvOS, Android TV, and Tizen

While widely known for mobile, React Native's flexible architecture makes it a proven and practical solution for building TV applications. This article explores how "out-of-tree" platforms allow developers to escape the fragmented world of traditional TV SDKs (tvOS, Android TV, webOS) and unify their workflow. Whether your team is new to React Native or already has a mobile codebase, you'll discover the benefits of code sharing, improved developer experience, and how major companies are using it to efficiently deliver production-ready apps to the living room screen.

Łukasz Chludziński

Software Engineer

@

Callstack

TV

10/3/2025

From Unit to E2E: A Guide to Testing React Native TV in 2026

While many React Native testing tools like Jest and Appium are transferable to TV development, they lack built-in support for remote control interactions. For component tests, this means the standard library helpers are insufficient, requiring developers to build their own mocks that emit low-level hardware key events to simulate D-pad focus changes. For end-to-end tests, it requires distinct configurations and commands for native versus web-based TV platforms. This article explains how to create these custom JS test helpers from scratch and how to set up Appium to run automated E2E tests on emulators, real devices, and device farms.

Michał Pierzchala

Principal Engineer

@

Callstack

React Native

9/23/2025

Bridging Animated.Value and SharedValue in React Native

In React Native, Animated.Value and Reanimated’s SharedValue serve a similar purpose: they hold values that can change outside the render cycle and are typically used to drive animations. The problem is that they come from different libraries and don’t interoperate. If a component expects an Animated.Value, you can’t pass in a SharedValue, and vice versa. While you can wire them together by subscribing on the JavaScript thread, that approach breaks down under load and causes dropped frames. This article shows how to connect these two types of values natively, so updates happen on the UI thread without depending on JavaScript listeners.

Satyajit Sahoo

Software Engineer

@

Callstack

Android

9/16/2025

Debugging Android Connectivity Issues with Metro Bundler

This article walks through how to debug and resolve connectivity problems between the Android emulator and Metro Bundler in React Native. From starting Metro and reversing ports to adjusting network settings and emulator data, it explains the common causes of the “Unable to load script” error and how to fix them.

Michał Pierzchala

Principal Engineer

@

Callstack

iOS

9/11/2025

How to Use Liquid Glass in React Native

Liquid Glass is Apple’s next-generation translucent material in iOS 26, designed to highlight content while keeping interfaces clear and dynamic. In this guide, we show how to use it in React Native, from best practices around readability and performance to hands-on examples with single and grouped glass elements. Whether you’re experimenting with Apple’s latest design language or adding polish to production apps, this article walks you through the essentials.

Mike Grabowski

CTO & Founder

@

Callstack

Performance

9/8/2025

How to Add Custom JSI Bindings in Your TurboModule (and Why You Might Need Them)

TurboModules provide a type-safe way to write native code in React Native. JSI sits underneath as a lower-level API, enabling direct interaction with the JavaScript runtime. This article explains how to safely inject custom bindings with an ArrayBuffer example.

Mike Grabowski

CTO & Founder

@

Callstack

Super Apps

8/27/2025

Re.Pack 5.2: Faster Babel Transforms, RN 0.80 & 0.81, Rozenite

Re.Pack 5.2 is out! This release focuses on parallel, smarter transforms with a new Babel & SWC loader, official support for React Native 0.80 and 0.81, fully typed configs, support for Rozenite and more.

Jakub Romańczyk

Software Engineer

@

Callstack

AI

8/21/2025

On-Device Text To Speech on Apple Devices with AI SDK

We’ve added on-device speech synthesis to our Apple provider for the AI SDK, completing the feature set alongside generation, embeddings, and transcription. This integration with AVSpeechSynthesizer brings fast, private, and offline text-to-speech to React Native, with support for multiple voices, languages, and even Personal Voice on iOS 17+.

Mike Grabowski

CTO & Founder

@

Callstack

Security

8/20/2025

Secure Communication Between Isolated React Native Instances

The latest release of react-native-sandbox adds support for direct, secure communication between sandboxed React Native instances. Instead of routing messages through the host app, sandboxes can now talk to each other directly using a model familiar from the web: the postMessage API with origin-based access control.

Aliaksandr Babrykovich

Senior C++ Engineer

@

Callstack

Enterprise

8/18/2025

React Native Enterprise Framework is now Rock

Meet Rock: the evolution of the React Native Enterprise Framework. Built by Callstack, Rock gives teams a stable, high-performance foundation for enterprise React Native development. From powerful build caching that cuts CI times by up to 96%, to ad-hoc iOS installs and an ecosystem of upcoming tools like Rozenite and Ottrelite, Rock is designed to help enterprises scale React Native with speed, reliability, and confidence.

Michał Pierzchala

Principal Engineer

@

Callstack

Articles for developers, by developers

Learn Once, Write for VR: A React Native Showcase for Meta's HorizonOS

Cross-Platform TV Apps With React Native for tvOS, Android TV, and Tizen

From Unit to E2E: A Guide to Testing React Native TV in 2026

Bridging Animated.Value and SharedValue in React Native

Debugging Android Connectivity Issues with Metro Bundler

How to Use Liquid Glass in React Native

How to Add Custom JSI Bindings in Your TurboModule (and Why You Might Need Them)

Re.Pack 5.2: Faster Babel Transforms, RN 0.80 & 0.81, Rozenite

On-Device Text To Speech on Apple Devices with AI SDK

Secure Communication Between Isolated React Native Instances

React Native Enterprise Framework is now Rock

Need React or React Native
expertise you can count on?

Your next read or watch starts here

Learn Once, Write for VR: A React Native Showcase for Meta's HorizonOS

Cross-Platform TV Apps With React Native for tvOS, Android TV, and Tizen

From Unit to E2E: A Guide to Testing React Native TV in 2026

Bridging Animated.Value and SharedValue in React Native

Debugging Android Connectivity Issues with Metro Bundler

How to Use Liquid Glass in React Native

How to Add Custom JSI Bindings in Your TurboModule (and Why You Might Need Them)

Re.Pack 5.2: Faster Babel Transforms, RN 0.80 & 0.81, Rozenite

On-Device Text To Speech on Apple Devices with AI SDK

Secure Communication Between Isolated React Native Instances

React Native Enterprise Framework is now Rock

Need React or React Nativeexpertise you can count on?

Your next read or watch starts here

Learn Once, Write for VR: A React Native Showcase for Meta's HorizonOS

Cross-Platform TV Apps With React Native for tvOS, Android TV, and Tizen

From Unit to E2E: A Guide to Testing React Native TV in 2026

Bridging Animated.Value and SharedValue in React Native

Debugging Android Connectivity Issues with Metro Bundler

How to Use Liquid Glass in React Native

React Native Conf 2025: React Foundation, Compiler 1.0 & Future of React Native

Building React Native App for Vega OS

Live Dev Session: <Activity>, Expo SDK 54, Router v6, Lynx 3.4, TanStack Start

Core Contributor Summit 2025 Highlights

Observability and OpenTelemetry in React Native

Structure Monorepo for Speed, Scale & Sanity

Need React or React Native
expertise you can count on?