Oliver Kwast

Hey React Native folks! 👋 To make things more comfortable for you here, I put together a starter pack and a feed — check them out and let me know what you think! Starter pack: bsky.app/starter-pack... Feed: bsky.app/profile/did:... #ReactNative

🥳 Observe is now generally available! React Native startup and per-screen performance from real devices, with every build and OTA update marked on the chart. Now you can see how your app actually feels to your users. Details in today's blog from @kadi.bsky.social: try.expo.dev/observe-ga-b...

Expo SDK 57 will be the easiest upgrade you've ever made. One command. No breaking changes. And boom, you're on React Native 0.86. It's also the first step toward a new release cadence we're considering: optional, non-breaking upgrades between the big SDKs: try.expo.dev/bluesky-sdk57

Trust your instincts. If your app feels slow today, there's probably a cold-start regression on a specific build, on specific devices... this has always been a difficult problem to identify. Now it's not. Our new "Observe" service is in open beta, free up to 10k MAUs. → try.expo.dev/observe-beta...

Do I know any React Native developers here? Looking forward for you to try out our new SDK for React Native observability. Feedback is welcome!

🚨New Video for the first time in awhile 😅! Introduction To React Native WebGPU 🔥. It took a really long time to understand Graphics enough to make this video so I hope it helps a lot of people! youtu.be/vons_XypdQw?...

SDK 56 beta is out 😅 ◆ 50%+ faster iOS builds ◆ 40% faster Android cold starts ◆ Expo UI + iOS widgets now stable ◆ expo-router rebuilt from scratch ◆ Inline native modules + brownfield multi-app support Strong "speed and stability" theme in this one: try.expo.dev/bluesky

Touch the grass 🌿 Made with React Native + WebGPU

React Native 0.85 is now available! This release includes the New Animation Backend, selection data in TextInput onChange events, Metro TLS support, and moves the Jest preset to a dedicated package. reactnative.dev/blog/2026/0...

That’s huge! …I mean tiny. You know what I mean 😁

Expo Router v55 is here, and it makes native navigation UI a first-class part of routing. ♢ New Stack API ♢ Native toolbars, native tabs, dynamic platform colors ♢ Apple zoom transitions, split view Tour + examples: https://expo.dev/blog/expo-router-v55-more-native-navigation-more-powerful-web

This setup is a must have for large apps.

Less is more: Bundle diffing comes to EAS Update. Instead of downloading the full bundle on every update, devices now receive a binary patch of only what changed. Result: ~75% smaller downloads. ♦ A 3MB update drops to ~0.75MB ♦ Opt-in beta, safe fallback to full bundles expo.dev/blog/ship-sm...

Expo SDK 55 is out 😅 RN 0.83, React 19.2 & a long list of things that make your app faster, smaller, & easier to build ♦ Hermes bytecode diffing cuts update sizes by ~75% ♦ Brownfield support gets a serious upgrade ♦ MCP now queries EAS + TestFlight crashes Full changelog: expo.dev/changelog/sd...

Working both with React Native and iOS native, I’ve noticed that AI tools seem to be more helpful (at least for me) in React Native projects. Curious if others have similar or completely different experiences?

I published a guide on how to build Instagram-like shared transitions in React Native across all three major platforms: kirillzyusko.github.io/react-native... Even Android Instagram and web don’t have this beauty implemented in their apps - but it’s possible in React Native. Check out how!

The last six months were pretty intense. Two projects with tight timelines and some interesting challenges along the way. So I barely had time to be active here. Time to change that again 🙂 Who from the React Native community is still around?

React Native 0.84 is now available! This release makes Hermes V1 the default JavaScript engine and ships precompiled iOS binaries by default — bringing significant performance improvements and faster build times to all React Native apps. reactnative.dev/blog/2026/0...

🤑 Learn how bitglow modernized DEPOT's React Native app with Expo Prebuild, cutting upgrade time by 80% & boosting performance scores from 36 to 90. The blog from @bonesyblue.bsky.social is a blueprint for speeding up an RN e-comm app and protecting rev with OTA updates. expo.dev/blog/how-to-...

We shipped compiler caching for EAS builds today 🎉 30% faster builds (both platforms), free for everyone, literally just set one env var. ccache does the heavy lifting on native compilation. SDK 53+ for Android, 54+ for iOS expo.dev/changelog/co...

React Native 0.83 is now available! This release includes React 19.2, new React Native DevTools features, and support for new Web APIs. And, it's the first React Native release with no user facing breaking changes. reactnative.dev/blog/2025/1...

Reanimated 4.2.0 is here, and it brings gifts! 🔥 🎁 Long-awaited Shared Element Transitions 🎉 Not production-ready yet, so they’re behind a feature flag. Please, test it out and give us feedback! 🎁 Experimental performance fixes, inspired by real apps...

👀 You can get a 25% discount today with the code “TODAY25” on my animations course. More info in the thread below 🧵

🆕 This PR from @nishan.dev adds CSS grid support to react native 🙌 It's not possible to overstate how massive this is for all of us. Future generations will celebrate Nishan Bende Day 🐐 github.com/facebook/yog...

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.

Folks are downloading react-native on npm over 4 million times a week, that 100% growth from last React Conf!

The iOS queue times for Free plan users on @expo.dev were around 4 hours at this time last week. We increased our Mac capacity today. We're seeing <10 min queue times right now. ⚡ Subscribers are seeing 0 min queue times.

𝝠 Expo SDK 54 is LIVE 🚀 ◆ React Native 0.81 ◆ Precompiled RN for iOS → faster clean builds ◆ iOS 26 Liquid Glass icons + views ◆ Android 16 target, edge-to-edge default ◆ Router v6 native tabs ◆ Updates: header overrides, progress, reload screen ◆ So much more... expo.dev/changelog/sd...

SDK 54 beta is out 🚀 ◆ RN 0.81 + React 19.1 ◆ Precompiled React Native for iOS → ⚡ faster builds ◆ iOS 26 Liquid Glass icons + Expo UI ◆ Android 16 edge-to-edge + predictive back ◆ Updates to EAS Update + Autolinking ◆ Final release w/ Legacy Arch Details in the changelog: expo.dev/changelog/sd...

We are excited to announce the release of React Native 0.81! 🎉 This new version brings Android 16 support, faster iOS builds (experimental), and several bugfixes. reactnative.dev/blog/2025/08...

When you get back after the weekend and find out your iOS simulator has been screen recording ... since Wednesday 🤣

Reanimated 4 is out now! 🥳 Shared element transitions are planned for a future release. Definitely looking forward to that!

React Native Reanimated 4 is now stable and ready for production 🐎 Featuring CSS Animations & Transitions, multithreading with React Native Worklets and more. youtu.be/Wr2fOM_xD2I

Announcing React Native Screens Overhaul ✨ ↳ Native Bottom Tabs on iOS and Android ↳ iOS 26 ↳ Support for the New & Legacy Architecture ↳ More native primitives coming in the future Currently in Alpha 🚀

WebGPU is an amazing piece of technology, allowing for truly cross-platform graphics and GPGPU programming. It's being used by frameworks like Three.js and Tensorflow.js to accelerate their internals ⚡ However, when we try to connect libraries together, we soon hit a limit... 🧵 THREAD 🧵 (1/n)

We did it! You can finally use third-party libraries in worklets - with `react-native-worklets`. Jump in the thread to learn more 👇

Just gonna put this out there and see if anything happens. I'm currently looking for a new full time Software Engineer position. I've got strong chops in React, React Native, Python and some .NET. ashtonlance.com #opentowork #hiring

Anyone know a good project or resource on using React Native Web with SSR? Or to ask it differently: how would you approach this topic? Context: We want to rebuild a web project with strong SEO requirements and dynamic content. We already have a great RN app and want to reuse as much as possible.

I’m super happy that we have another client for which we can migrate from react-native-cli to the Expo Prebuild / CNG workflow 😌