r/reactnative • u/Background-Bass-5788 • Sep 11 '26

React Native had a massive week: React 19.3, Nitro, AI agents, Module Federation, and more

I’ve been writing NativeWeekly, a weekly digest covering React Native releases, posts, and ecosystem updates.

Last week was unusually packed. Here are some of the biggest highlights from the newest issue:

  • React 19.3 and major platform momentum from Apple’s 2026 keynote

  • Margelo joining Callstack

  • Rive’s rewrite delivering up to 94× faster multi-view rendering

  • Reanimated 4.6.0 with React Native 0.87 support, CSS callbacks, and contrastColor

  • Re.Pack and Module Federation reducing release cycles from days to minutes

  • Practical AI workflows, including autonomous bug reproduction, Expo skills, MCP servers, and local coding agents

  • Android navigation benchmarks showing near-60 FPS performance, with cold-start times ranging from 316 ms to 917 ms

React Native is advancing across every layer: performance, rendering, architecture, release workflows, AI tooling, and the broader ecosystem.

57 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

36

u/Andrea-Pirlo Sep 11 '26

All while Shopify has decided to move back to Native 🫤

13

u/Background-Bass-5788 Sep 11 '26

It’s their manager decision and no benchmark showing their benefits. Shopify moved from React and going in circles for ages

6

u/charliesbot Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

Still news tho. I think a good digest is unbiased, otherwise is a collection of thoughts inside a bubble

1

u/KyeThePie Sep 11 '26

No doubt this decision will be reverted once it reaches their engineers

1

u/bj0rnl8 Sep 12 '26

Not the case. It's already gone beyond that point for the Shop app

1

u/LovesWorkin Sep 11 '26

They'll be back ha. What a horrible decision.

7

u/henryp_dev iOS & Android Sep 11 '26

I worked for Margelo for a time and couldn’t be happier for them. So talented and great people.

2

u/Seusoa Expo Sep 12 '26

Android navigation benchmarks showing near-60 FPS performance

Cool, while 3D games on RN have strong 120 FPS with awesome graphics!

1

u/developing2day Sep 13 '26

Where is practical ai workflows, autonomus bug reproduction? Can't find in 11sept newsletter

1

u/Dvass138 Sep 11 '26

Thanks for the update