React Native Community is spread across the globe to connect developers and React Native users with each other. Other than the Global Summits, Conferences, and annual meets, the ReactFlux chat, forum-like groups, and company-based communities; enable communications about the platform & understand it in a better manner. Moreover, this welcomes more queries and concerns regarding the platform, features, and its compatibility with other components & supporting libraries available on the web.  Technology keeps evolving & so is the React Native platform. That’s what makes it a choice of several people, including both users and the developers. Development is a never-ending cycle. With every update & need of the industry, the arrival of updates is a sure shot. Here, we will be talking about the React Native updates that the community came recently in 2020 and the first quarter of 2021. 

The latest releases of React native in the reverse chronology are: 

  • React Native 0.64- Support of Hermes on iOS 
  • React Native 0.63- Enabling LogBox by default 
  • React Native 0.62- Support of Flipper by default 

React Native 0.64- Support of Hermes opt-in on iOS 

Earlier, Hermes support was only available for Android. Now, with the release of React Native 0.64 latest in March 2021, the support extends to building an iOS app as well.  Hermes is a JavaScript engine that is optimized to run React Native & improvise its performance. It helps by minimizing the utilization of memory, reducing download size & reducing ‘time to interactive’ (TTI).  React Native 0.64 comes with: 
  • It is enabling Inline Requires as a metro configuration to improve the startup time by delaying the execution. It performs Babel transformation on input modules and imports it to inline. It was available as an opt-in configuration for few years, and with this update, the option is enabled by default. 
  • React 17 is coming with a new JSX transform to improvise it to be able to use JSX without importing. 
  • Hermes with Proxy Support to enable compatibility in migration of project packages to make JavaScript engine default for Android. 
To make your React Native app compatible with the latest version 0.64, here are certain software dependencies to be addressed: 
  • Mandatory- Xcode 12 and CocoaPods 1.10 
  • Node Support ranging from Node 10-12. 
  • Flipper bumped to 0.75.1
  • Drop-in Android API levels ranging from 16-20. 

React Native 0.63- Enabling LogBox by default 

They were addressing the issues of errors, warning and log system with the redesigned version of LogBox considering primary goals of concise, formatted, and actionable logs. The Redbox, yellow box designed LogBox is set by default to attain the performance goals with the features including log notifications, code frames, component stacks, stack frame was collapsing, and syntax error formatting. LogBox.ignoreLogs() and LogBox.ignoreAllLogs() are depreciated from the API of LogBox. With the next update of React Native 0.64, these options will be totally removed, so keep that in mind when upgrading next.  Moreover, React Native 0.63 comes up with: 
  • Native colours that enable you to change the colour of the platform with the PlatformColor option and that of a different button with DynamicColorIOS for giving the freedom to customize your platform as per your choice. These accessibility settings are in addition to the default themes settings of Light/Dark mode. 
  • Minimized the compatibility checks by dropping iOS 9 ad Node.js 8 support to optimize the performance and implement the latest security fixes. 
  • Change of iOS Lauchscreen from xib to storyboard to provide app’s launch screen compatible with all the iPhone screens. 
  • Enables trouble-free rendering of <View/> inside any <Text/> without any size restrictions on these components. 

React Native 0.62- Support of Flipper by default 

From the early months of the 2020s, React Native version 0.62 enables the support of Flipper by default. It is a developer toolset for debugging Android & iOS mobile apps, which is applicable for both existing & upcoming apps. It is an extensible platform; you can pull the plugins from the marketplace & install custom ones as per your project’s requirements. The provided features of this tool enable metro actions, viewing crash reports, an inspection of native layout output, logs, databases, and preferences.  With React native version 0.62, we moved from Apple TV to react-native-tvos to bring Apple TV in line with other platforms, namely React Native Windows and React Native macOS. If you are an existing user of Apple TV projects, you need to upgrade your Apple TV project to use react-native-tvos 0.62. also read about Top React Tools & Libraries

In addition to these features, version 0.62 is coming with: 

  • The dark mode gives you the freedom to switch between the colour scheme. You can access it from the Appearance module. 
  • The extension of React Native Upgrade helper tools from version 0.61 to Upgrade-Support in this version. It a GitHub issue tracker that submits your issues regarding your continued projects to receive assistance from the community. 
  • Accessibility improvements like the addition of accessibilityValue, missing props on Touchables, onSlidingComplete accessibility events, change of switching element. 
  • TextInput changes by removal of onTextInput to assure W3C compliance. 
  • Removal of PropTypes from core components to minimize the size of React Native core app size. 
  • Upgrade to React DevTools v4 for performance gains, navigation options, and support for React Hooks. 
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