Hey notJust Developers,

The React Native team made a great announcement last week, about 0.77. Why wait? Let's dive into today's highlights.

1. React Native 0.77 RC-0 Released 🚀
2. Unistyles 3.0 Released 🔥
3. Meet Cali: an AI agent for React Native

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

React Native 0.77 RC-0 Released 🚀

In October, the React Native team released V0.76, and the great news is that within one month, just last week, they launched the first Release Candidate (RC-0) of V0.77 🚀. Let's take a look at all the exciting & new features coming in 0.77 (thanks to Michał Pierzchała for the highlights).

1. Added support for{ 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚢: 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚜 } style
2. New Swift Template for iOS
3. ​Native APIs (New Architecture Turbo Modules) are now more stable
4. Support for better tvOS integration​
5. Improved Animated performance​
6. Upgraded to React DevTools 6 (supports Server Components)

Added support for { 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚢: 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚜 } style

By adding the display: contents style, you can directly ignore an element (like a <View>) from the component tree (known as the DOM tree in React or Web). This means all the children (e.g., <Text> components) of that element will treat their grandparent as their direct parent. This can be useful when a wrapper (e.g., <View>) has no value (impact) in the final tree.

New Swift Template for iOS

In September, Oskar Kwaśniewski worked on a PR that removed Objective-C from the template. The React Native team has finally merged it with the 0.77 release. So, starting from 0.77, you will see AppDelegate.swift instead of AppDelegate.mm.

NOTE: When the stable release of 0.77 is out, you will find a dedicated blog post on our notjust.dev/blog.

Unistyles 3.0 Released 🔥

After months of development, Jacek has finally released Unistyles 3.0 beta-1, packed with tons of new capabilities. Unistyles is a cross-platform styling library that extends the default Stylesheet in React Native. Let’s take a look at what’s exciting in v3.

1. Zero Re-renders 🔥
2. V3.0 now follows 100% of the Stylesheet API
3. Powered by Nitro Modules
4. Facility to add custom style classes (e.g., Classes from Tailwind)

Zero Re-renders

Before Unistyles 3.0, any native change in the app (such as a theme change triggered by the user or a phone orientation change) triggered a re-render across the app. But now, with version 3, Unistyles uses C++ to handle styles much more efficiently, so those re-renders don't happen anymore 🔥.

Powered by Nitro Modules

Unistyles is now using Nitro Modules, created by Marc! Nitro Module helps you to build extremely 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. So, by using the power of Nitro Module, Unistyles is now fully type-safe, offering strong typing from TypeScript through C++ to Kotlin and Swift (instead of Java and Objective C) 🚀.

That’s incredible! Why not give Unistyles V3 a try today? The documentation is fantastic—you'll love reading it.

Meet Cali: an AI agent for React Native

Last week, Mike & Oskar Kwaśniewski released a new and interesting CLI named CALI. CALI is an AI agent that is powered by the Vercel AI SDK and React Native CLI, and it helps you build React Native apps. Pretty exciting!

Benefits of using CALI

The most interesting benefits of CALI include:

1. Simplified Commands: You don’t need to remember any specific commands for React Native CLI. For example, you can simply write “Install pods” instead of the command pod install.
2. Enhanced Troubleshooting: CALI is super helpful for troubleshooting errors, making development smoother.
3. Comprehensive Library Search: It can search & list React Native libraries in your cli from the React Native Directory.

But that's not all! CALI offers even more capabilities such as:

• Listing and managing connected Android and iOS devices and simulators.
• Installing and managing npm packages and CocoaPods dependencies.
• And much more.

Use CALI today

Use CALI today with the command npx cali, and write “Hey, build an App" in your terminal. It will take care of the rest for you 🤷‍♂️.

That’s it 🙌

So, last week was a big release week! We saw the first Release Candidate of React Native 0.77, the first beta version of Unistyles 3 & a new CALI AI agent for building React Native apps 🚀. Before we wrap up, a question for you: Is this TRUE or NOT 👇?

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🔴 Join me live

Throughout December, we’ll be hosting daily livestreams as part of the hackathon! 🎉 Join us every day at 2 PM UTC for insightful tutorials that you won’t want to miss. Set a reminder and tune in! 👇

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🔁 In case you missed it

Building 4 apps in 4 weeks with Expo Come watch Vadim begin a journey to build 4 apps in 4 weeks. We'll learn about how he plans to execute this challenge and what tricks he uses to build apps fast with Expo. Watch now

Launching #notJustHack Are you ready to build, launch, and win? Join the ultimate online hackathon for mobile developers this December and turn your app ideas into reality. Watch now

🔥 Press worthy

1️⃣ New blog post on React Native Screens 4.0 by Software Mansion.

2️⃣ WebAssembly is coming to React Native with native performance!

3️⃣ New Edge-to-Edge display article by Mathieu on Expo Blog.

4️⃣ Radon IDE 1.0 Released. Build React Native apps without leaving VSCode

5️⃣ React Native Bottom Tabs 0.7.0 is out! Added support for React Navigation v7.
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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

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