Hey notJust Developers,

The most exciting news of last week is that the Margelo team discovered something incredible to improve the performance of all React Native apps. Let’s check out today’s highlights.

1. All React Native Apps are now 12% faster 🔥
2. Radon IDE V1.3 published 🚀
3. Nitro is now in Create-React-Native-Library 💯

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Join us at the 5th edition of App.js, 28-30 May, to have fun with fellow React Native developers! Meet the creators of React Native and Expo, connect with the people behind your favorite libraries, and hang out with your GitHub and Twitter friends in real life.

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All React Native apps are now 12% faster 🔥

A few days ago, Marc, CEO of Margelo, created a PR (Pull Request) in the React Native repository that can significantly speed up the startup time for all React Native apps on Android! Marc mentioned that Android apps now start in just 400 milliseconds. That’s amazing, right?

What’s new in this Pull Request?

So, the team discovered a system in Android called mmap that loads files into RAM instead of the Hard Drive or SSD. React Native uses this mmap to load the JS Bundle (files) into RAM, which helps to avoid loading the entire JS Bundleat once. However, in Android APKs, JS bundle files are often compressed to save space, but mmap can’t load these compressed files into RAM.

So, the PR adds an option for you to disable bundle compression so that mmap can load the files into RAM and improve app startup time by 12%. Disabling compression will make the APK size a bit bigger (the benchmark says an extra 1 to 2 MB), but Google Play compresses the APK anyway.

Make your app 12% faster starting today 🚀

The Margelo team announced that you can try this feature even today by simply adding the below lines to your app/build.gradle file (more details here).

androidResources {
    noCompress += ["bundle"]
}

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Radon IDE V1.3 published 🚀

Last week, Krzysztof Magiera and his team from Software Mansion released Radon IDE V1.3. This update includes a built-in Network Inspector, making network inspection smoother in React Native apps. Let’s take a look at what’s new in V1.3:

1. Built-in Network Inspector
2. Zero configs integrated Redux DevTools
3. The IDE now matches the editor (VSCode) theme by default

Built-in Network Inspector

With v1.3, now you'll see a new panel in Radon IDE for displaying XHR network traffic (background data requests and responses) in your React Native app. This network inspector uses the Chrome DevTools interface, so if you're familiar with React or Chrome DevTools, you'll feel right at home.

Zero configs integrated Redux DevTools

​Maciej Stosio added support for Redux DevTools by using the redux-devtools-expo-dev-plugin. You can now manage the Redux States of your React Native or Expo app directly from the Radon IDE. That’s amazing 🚀

NOTE: Radon IDE is a VSCode and Cursor (an AI code editor) extension that makes your editor a fully featured IDEfor React Native and Expo apps. You can explore more about Radon IDE on the notjust.dev/blog.

Nitro is now in Create-React-Native-Library 💯

​Burak Güner from the Callstack IO team announced last week that Nitro Modules have been introduced in the Create-React-Native-Library (a library that helps developers build new libraries). This means, that if a user runs the command npx create-react-native-library, they will find an option Nitro Modules in their terminal (as shown above in the image). Create-React-Native-Library (CRNL) was originally developed by the React Native team and is now maintained by the Callstack IO team under the React Native Builder Bob GitHub repository.

What is the Nitro Module?

Back in 2024, Marc from @margelo_io released a mind-blowing Framework Nitro to build the Nitro Modules (next-gen Native Modules) for React Native developers. The framework helps you to create very fast Native Modules (Ex: Camera Module) that are type-safe (safe from type errors at runtime) and statically compiled (optimized for performance before they run). Nitro uses first-class Swift support, which has now been integrated into the Create-React-Native-Library (CRNL).

That’s it 🙌

Last week was exciting with the news from the Mergelo team about making all React Native Android apps 12x faster! What new updates can we expect from the CallStack team next week?​

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🔴 Join me live

This Friday we will build the Reddit Clone in React Native. It's going to be a tutorial packed with value, so set a reminder and don't miss it out 👇

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🔁 In case you missed it

Build the Apple Invites App with React Native & Reanimated In this video, we’re building an Apple-style Invite App using React Native and Reanimated. We’ll design a beautiful UI with blur effects, animations, and smooth transitions using Reanimated 4. Watch now

Announcing the WINNERS of notJust Hack notJust.Hack is an online hackathon where developers from around the world come together to build and launch mobile apps. In this demo day, we'll be going straight into the top submissions, where you'll hear from the winners, and we'll give you a sneak peek at what’s coming next! Watch now

🔥 Press worthy

1️⃣ The React team has deprecated Create React App for new projects and is encouraging existing apps to switch to a framework like Next.js.

2️⃣ Check out this "Expo EAS Build Cheat Sheet" from @kadikraman. It includes all the most commonly used commands for Build on the EAS CLI 💯.

3️⃣ The Software Mansion team has published an in-depth guide on their new React Native Audio API, offering precise and high-performance audio control and playback.

4️⃣ React Native Gesture Handler 2.23.0 has been released, featuring improved compatibility with the React Native Testing Library.

5️⃣ GOLDEN RC-5 for React Native 0.78 has been released. The stable version is coming next week! 🚀
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The newsletter was written by Anis and edited by Vadim Savin.

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