Hey notJust Developers,

Last week was a lot of fun at RNL Conf right by London Bridge, with exciting announcements from the Expo and React Native communities. Let's dive into today's highlights!

1. Expo SDK 52 Stable Released 🚀
2. All about RNL Conf Talks 🙋

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Now, let’s explore each news story in detail.

After a 2-week beta period, the Expo team released the stable SDK 52 last week, the largest release ever, which includes React Native 0.76. Major highlights are:

1. New Architecture now Default in Expo 🔥
2. New React Native DevTools Integrated
3. Expo DOM Component 🚀
4. Experimental Tree Shaking
5. Improvements in Edge-to-edge layouts on Android

New Architecture now Default in Expo 🔥

Starting with SDK 52, when you create a new Expo app with npx create-expo-app, you will see that newArchEnabled is set to true in your app.json. Importantly, Expo Go with SDK 52 and above supports only the New Architecture. On top of that, all Expo SDK packages (e.g., expo-camera) now support the New Architecture.

New React Native DevTools Integrated

React Native 0.76 brings new React Native DevTools (a next-gen debugging stack) that work seamlessly with Expo SDK 52 and replace the JavaScript Debugger introduced in Expo SDK 47.

NOTE: Check out our detailed post on all the major highlights of React Native 0.76.

Expo DOM Component 🚀

​DOM Components in SDK 52 are super helpful for migrating a web app (like a React or Next.js app) to a mobile app (like a React Native app) or if you have a web library that isn't yet available for native Android or iOS. To save months of work, you can just create a DOM Component, copy-paste your web code (like code with <div>, <h1>, etc.) into your Expo project, and write “use dom” at the top of the component (Expo JS file). Boom, your React (web) code now works smoothly in your native app 🔥. Isn’t it crazy? Kudos to Evan and his team.

Experimental Tree Shaking

SDK 52 adds experimental Tree Shaking support. This allows Expo to remove unused imports and exports from your app automatically. For example, if you use the lucide-react library and only need ChevronLeft and ChevronRight icons, Tree Shaking will keep only those two icons in your app's JS bundle. All other unused icons will be removed. One benchmark showed this can reduce bundle size by up to 87% 🚀.

Improvements in Edge-to-edge layouts on Android

The Expo team worked with Mathieu to release react-native-edge-to-edge to support Android 15's edge-to-edge enforcement by Google. Edge-to-edge means that the app content will use the entire screen, including areas under the device status bar (the bar that shows you time, battery charge, etc.) and the device navigation bar. Currently, edge-to-edge is optional for apps, but from Android 15, with the app's Target SDK level set to 35 or higher, edge-to-edge will be the only choice, and the status & navigation bars will be transparent.

All about React Native London Talks 🙋

Last week, React Native London Meetup organized a conference, with Theodo as the main organizer and notJust.devas the community partner, among others. The most exciting talks were:

1. Put Your Seatbelts On and Get Ready for Nitro! 🚀
2. Breaking the Speed Limit with Nitro
3. Re.Pack 5: Unlocking new possibilities 🔥
4. Branch Out: Monorepos & React Native

Put Your Seatbelts On and Get Ready for Nitro! 🚀

​Marc, CEO of @margelo_io, has released a mind-blowing Framework Nitro to build (next-gen Native Modules) for React Native developers. The framework helps you to create very fast Native Modules(e.g., Camera Module) that are type-safe (safe from type errors at runtime) and statically compiled (optimized for performance before they run), all while allowing JS to interact with those Native Modules easily. On stage, he mentioned that Nitro uses the new Swift <> C++ interop, which has nearly zero overhead. Additionally, instead of requiring Java, Nitro bridges to Kotlin directly (sketches by David & Delphine from the conf).

Breaking the Speed Limit with Nitro

​Mike, CTO & founder of @callstackio, is working on a new SDK called “react-native-fast-io”. This SDK helps developers to handle data (from the internet or device files) more efficiently. It avoids loading all the data into the app's memory at once. Instead, it creates native data streams, processes them bit by bit, and then sends the data to JavaScript for developers to handle. On stage, he mentioned that Nitro makes the SDK even faster (sketches by David from the conf).

Re.Pack 5: Unlocking new possibilities 🔥

​Jakub from Callstack introduced Re.Pack V5 on stage. Re.Pack is a more advanced toolkit than the default Metrofor bundling JavaScript code & images in React Native apps. It was created to bring the Webpack ecosystem to React Native. Starting from V5, Re.Pack uses Rspack (written in Rust) for super-fast build times with almost all of Webpack’s capabilities. You can switch between Rspack and Webpack as needed. Also, V5 supports Module Federation 2.0(sharing code between multiple React Native apps, with common JS code on a Re.Pack server and Native code deployed on the App or Play Store). Jakub mentioned Re.Pack is now 5x faster with Rspack than with Webpack 🔥.

Branch Out: Monorepos & React Native

​AmazonApp devs Abhishek and Olivia (on stage) shared the idea of Monorepo for React Native apps. A Monorepo is a single repo that supports multiple platforms (iOS, VisionOS, WatchOS, Windows, Android) and multiple RN versions (0.76, 0.75, etc.), and can be used by different teams. Using just a single shared package.json, it allows platform-specific navigation (iOS and Windows), making code management more efficient (sketches by David & Delphine from the conf).

That’s it 🙌

​Expo SDK 52 stable is now available! Why not try out DOM Components today? You can ship your React web code to an Expo mobile app in just 2-5 minutes. Isn’t that amazing?

🔴 Join me live

React Native Mastery is Launching on November 26 🗓️

Set a reminder and join me Live on YouTube for the official launch 🎉

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🔁 In case you missed it

Expo SDK 52 & React Native 0.76: Latest Updates and Improvements We will be exploring powerful new features, including the new React Native DevTools, faster Metro builds, DOM Components, and experimental tree shaking in Expo. Ready to unpack these updates together and see how they can streamline your development process? Watch now

Building a Headspace Clone with React Native, Expo and RevenueCat We'll build a fully functional meditation app inspired by Headspace using React Native, Expo, and Expo Router. This project covers audio playback for meditations, animations for a beautiful user experience, and monetization with in-app subscriptions powered by RevenueCat. Watch now

🔥 Press worthy

1️⃣ Check out our in-depth article on React Native 0.76​

2️⃣ Unistyles now using Nitro C++ for super-fast performance.

3️⃣ Adding an Animated Splash Screen with expo-custom-assets.

4️⃣ React Native SVG 15.9.0 out 🚀. Supports two new filters FeComposite & FeDropShadow.

5️⃣ React Native Screens 4.0 is out with major improvements, including React Navigation 7 support and better animations.
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The newsletter was written by Anis and edited by Vadim Savin.

Vadim Savin Helping you become a better developer together with the notJust.dev team