The efficiency of an app depends on its user experience. People should be able to access and use your app without hassle, or they’re more likely to abandon it.

React Native helps developers improve user satisfaction with their apps. It provides a framework that interprets the native app’s code for a seamless user experience.

But how exactly does React Native Work? And is it worth using?

What Is React Native?

React Native is a mobile app JavaScript framework. It lets you use the same codebase to build your app for several platforms including Android and iOS. React Native was a Facebook hackathon project before the company revealed a full version in 2015 to manage two code bases on the social network.

How Does React Native Work?

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Enhancing the user experience is the essence of Reactive Native. It makes provision for building your app’s interface with JavaScript and facilitates communication between a native app and JavaScript.

Since the JavaScript code and the native app’s code use different languages, they wouldn’t usually be able to communicate with each other. React Native creates a bridge that permits bidirectional communication between both components. The bridge identifies the JavaScript data type and interprets it into the native app's language and vice versa for effective communication.

As a cross-platform development framework, React Native allows users to access your app on multiple platforms and get the same experience. Unlike its counterparts such as Ionic, React Native doesn’t produce code-based views. It gets its views from the components of the native apps.

React Native is a version of React, a JavaScript open-source framework that you can use to build interactive interfaces with less code. It provides a JavaScript code base that you can apply to multiple applications as it processes the native app’s code with specific APIs.

Advantages of Using React Native

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React Native offers many benefits to users including the following.

1. High Performance

One of the biggest strengths of Reactive Native is that it uses the native app’s code to operate. This flexibility creates an almost native experience, void of inconsistencies that you may find in other cross-platform solutions. The interpretation of native code enhances the performance of your device in terms of speed.

2. Cost Saving

If you were to build an app for multiple operating systems such as Android and iOS, you might choose to write two apps, with specific code for each. But with React Native, you can reuse the code on multiple platforms, saving time and money.

3. Thriving Community

React Native is popular in the developer community. More developers are using the open-source JavaScript platform to build better applications and are sharing their knowledge. If you encounter challenges, you can get help from other developers.

Disadvantages of Using React Native

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React Native isn’t perfect, though—its disadvantages include the following.

1. Compatibility Issues

You may encounter compatibility issues with React Native if your app is highly interactive with a complex UI design. This is because the bridge must interpret the code between the JavaScript threads and the Native app’s threads—too many activities can slow down your application.

2. Dependency on Facebook

React Native is a product of Facebook. Although other organizations use the technology and can customize it to their needs, Facebook is still the pioneer of the system. As with any third-party platform, you don’t have full control of it. If Facebook decides to stop using the technology tomorrow, it'll affect your application.

Despite its ownership, bear in mind that React Native’s open-source license could help mitigate this problem.

3. Absence of Custom Modules

React Native is a relatively new technology. Hence, some custom modules aren’t available yet on its radar. You may also find flaws that require improvement to the present modules. If the module you need for your app isn’t currently available, you’ll have to build it from scratch.

Leveraging React Native for Better User Experience

React Native is beneficial to everyone as it cuts across different industries. You don’t have to worry about developing individual code for your app to function on multiple platforms. If you aren’t working with complex designs, you are in good hands as it will enhance your user experience.