Reviewing examples of popular apps using React Native

Now that we know a little bit about React Native, it’s time to get excited about it. A great way to get excited about a new technology is to look at what that technology has already been used for. This is also a good strategy when you must decide to use a particular technology.

The obvious example comes from Meta – the birthplace of React Native. The very first implementations of ReactJS took place in Facebook Ads. It is fitting that React Native is used for that same feature on mobile devices. Facebook’s mobile app is not entirely created with React Native, but some parts of it use it. That means the Facebook app is a React Native brownfield app. The opposite of that is apps written in React Native alone, and that sort of app is called greenfield.

While we’re in the Metaverse, I will mention that the Instagram app uses React Native, as does the Oculus app.

Don’t worry, Meta is not the only notable company using React Native. Discord not only uses React Native for their app, but they also write blog posts about how they maintain their app. In this Medium article, https://blog.discord.com/how-discord-achieves-native-ios-performance-with-react-native-390c84dcd502, the Discord team states that they adopted React Native as soon as it was open sourced, and they are still happy with their decision years later.

Shopify is another big player in the React Native ecosystem. They have an article on their blog entitled React Native is the Future of Mobile at Shopify: https://shopify.engineering/react-native-future-mobile-shopify. Shopify engineers also write more technical articles, for example, about accessibility: https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/react-native-accessibility.

The website-builder giant Wix is also active in the React Native world. They have also written about their adventure with React Native (https://medium.com/wix-engineering/react-native-at-wix-the-architecture-db6361764da6) but they also create open source libraries, for example, this UI kit: https://github.com/wix/react-native-ui-lib.

Circling back to listing specific apps built with React Native, I have to mention Coinbase. Managing users’ finances in a reliable manner is the top priority for this crypto market leader. They analyzed, iterated, and landed on using React Native as their main mobile technology. You can read their article about the transition from native technologies on their blog: https://blog.coinbase.com/announcing-coinbases-successful-transition-to-react-native-af4c591df971.

You may have heard of companies such as Tesla, Walmart, Salesforce, Bloomberg, and Vogue. You may have used apps such as Uber Eats, Artsy, Words with Friends, and SoundCloud Pulse. What do they have in common? Surprise! (Not really.) They all use React Native. You can find even more examples with links to articles in the React Native showcase: https://reactnative.dev/showcase.

Not all React Native stories are success stories, though. One famous case (by famous, I mean it was tweeted about for a few days) is Airbnb. Airbnb’s website uses ReactJS, so it was logical for them to try React Native for their mobile app. After a few years of development, they hit development roadblocks and performance issues. Their app consists of a very big map that needs to work perfectly. The developers working on the app often needed help from React Native developers, which was a bottleneck for this web-technology-focused company. They announced their divorce from React Native in 2018: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/sunsetting-react-native-1868ba28e30a. Luckily, they still develop their amazing animation library, Lottie (http://airbnb.io/lottie/#/), which can be used in React Native apps.