Expo SDK 56 is here and 3 things actually matter
Published a month ago
Hey {{ subscriber.first_name | strip | default: "there" }}, 👋 Expo SDK 56 beta dropped last week, bundling React Native 0.85.2 and React 19.2.3. There’s a lot of exciting things in this release. In this email, I will cover actually matters for indie devs shipping apps.
First, a quick word from this week’s sponsor, then we get into it. Build AR/VR Apps in React Native - No Unity Required​ReactVision Studio is a visual scene editor for React Native developers. Design AR/VR scenes with drag-and-drop, generate 3D assets from text prompts, and ship to phones and Meta Quest from one codebase. No game engine, no new language - just the React Native stack you already know. Open source, MIT-licensed, 100k+ npm installs, Expo-compatible. Try now for free.​ Expo UI is now stableAfter 3 SDK cycles of iteration (53, 54, 55), Expo UI is officially production-ready. The SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose APIs are stable, it’s in the default That’s the headline. But here’s what makes it actually useful: Universal components. You no longer have to split files into Web is supported too, but still experimental. Drop-in replacements. Expo UI now replaces some of the most installed libraries in our ecosystem:
Most migrations are just an import swap. That’s it. Fewer dependencies, fewer libraries to track on upgrade day. Performance: Faster everywhereThis is the most under-hyped part of the release. Real numbers below.
Precompiled Expo packages. SDK 56 ships prebuilt XCFrameworks for the heaviest Expo modules on iOS. Enabled by default locally and on EAS Build. No config. Just faster iOS builds. New JSI layer for iOS native modules. Calling into a native module from JS used to mean crossing 3 language boundaries: Swift → Objective-C++ → C++. SDK 56 removes the Objective-C++ middle layer entirely using Swift/C++ interop. Fewer hops, less overhead, faster native module calls. Hermes V1 as default. Comes from React Native 0.84. Faster startup, better runtime performance, less memory. No migration needed. If you’re on Hermes already (the default since RN 0.70), you’ll get V1 automatically on upgrade. Expo Router forks React NavigationThis is a big one. Expo Router no longer depends on The Expo team forked the parts of React Navigation they build on, and went their own way. Both projects still build on For most of us, this means a migration. Most code imported directly from
A few new things landed too: Android Toolbar. Experimental support for Streaming SSR for Web. With the Other mentions worth bookmarkingA quick dump of everything else that caught my eye:
Upgrade and test it nowThis is a beta (for a couple of weeks), but it’s worth upgrading at least one app to test. There are a lot of breaking changes ( The Expo team built an I’m going to go upgrade one of the apps in my portfolio right after I send this email. Cheers, PS. Hit reply and let me know what are you most excited about in the new Expo SDK 56 release |