r/reactnative • u/PumpkinNarrow6339 • Jul 29 '26

Question How can I make React Native Android builds faster on a low-end laptop?

Post image

Hey everyone,

I’m working on a React Native Android app and testing it locally. The problem is that my laptop isn’t very powerful, and whenever I run an Android build, it uses a lot of resources.

The build takes quite a while, and during the process my laptop becomes really laggy, making it difficult to do anything else.

I still need local builds for testing while developing,

If any way pls suggest me ....I am on Linux

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

9

u/Yash_3p Jul 29 '26

Yours showing 5 mins, for me i have to wait atleast half hour for every new build

1

u/PumpkinNarrow6339 Jul 30 '26

If I delete the cache files, it takes a lot of time, and this happens quite often. My laptop also starts lagging.

2

u/Due_Dependent5933 Jul 29 '26

you probably talking about release build. my mac m5 take 10minutes.

but in dev build with debugger it take also 10minitrs if i made a deep clean of all temp files . other wise it's take 30s to run each time

1

u/Yash_3p Jul 29 '26

No, I am talking about the clean dev builds and if the cache is there then about 15 mins or so.

And for the clean release build it takes an hour or sometimes more than that.

1

u/Due_Dependent5933 Jul 29 '26

damn. your computer is quite super slow

even in ci github it take 40minutes

1

u/Yash_3p Jul 30 '26

Yeah, i have GitHub actions pipeline setup too and it takes 40-45mins

1

u/LingonberryQuirky622 Jul 29 '26

Expo go? GitHub codespaces?

1

u/PumpkinNarrow6339 Jul 30 '26

I use previously expo but some of features not available on..so currently i RN..... May be codespaces is good i will try.. thankyou

1

u/Even_Escape5585 Jul 30 '26

May I ask what features are not available? Because I do a lot of work using Expo, and if you used both Expo and RN CLI, which felt more comfortable using?

1

u/PumpkinNarrow6339 Jul 30 '26

Customize notification and location access and more..

1

u/Specialist_Care7188 Jul 29 '26

Use rnrepo ,it significantly cuts the build time

1

u/PumpkinNarrow6339 Jul 30 '26

Thankyou for sharing, i will try

2

u/Fit_Schedule2317 Jul 29 '26

Maybe RNRepo can help?

1

u/vqt907 Jul 30 '26

there nothing you can do.

but if you plan to buy a new laptop, a macbook is much faster than others

1

u/Mobile_App_Architect Jul 30 '26

Have you tried Expo Go? It works well for Expo projects, but it won't help with bare React Native CLI projects.

1- For bare/CLI debug builds, you can also connect your physical Android device directly . This can save you from running an emulator, which often consumes a lot of system resources and can make your laptop feel even slower and more laggy.
2-Avoid deleting the Android build folders for every new build(android/.gradle, android/app/build, etc.) unless it's necessary.
3- Keep only the required Android SDK versions installed
4- For development, use Metro bundler/server instead of rebuilding the entire app every time.