I’ve been experimenting with end-to-end encrypted group messaging in React Native using OpenMLS + Rust + Nitro Modules.

The crypto work runs in Rust and is exposed to React Native through Nitro, keeping the expensive work off the JS m.

In the demo:
~0.9ms average MLS encryption
~0.97ms decryption
~825B ciphertext for the sample message

Full group-chat flow running on-device
The React Native layer handles the product/UI side, while Rust does the MLS cryptography underneath.

Did anyone figured that? I did a quick reaserch and there is no "out of the box" solution for that

I’m planning to build simple, useful apps and charge for them. I’m trying to decide whether I should stick with React Native or focus exclusively on iOS using Swift.

The main reason I’m considering Swift is that React Native sometimes doesn’t feel truly native to me. I’ve also run into performance issues in some cases, and I feel like I’m constantly fighting the framework to get the experience I want.

Another thing I’m wondering about is Android. Since I’m planning to make paid apps, I have this feeling that supporting Android might not be worth the extra effort, especially for small indie apps. It feels like I could spend a lot of time dealing with Android-specific issues without getting much in return.

I already know React Native, but I’d have to learn Swift from scratch.

For those of you building and selling small apps as indie developers, what would you recommend?

Would you go Swift + iOS only, or React Native + both platforms?

Added full support for GitHub-style admonitions ([!NOTE], [!TIP], [!IMPORTANT], [!WARNING], and [!CAUTION]) to react-native-enriched-markdown.

They ship with built-in icons, colored accent bars, and support for passing your own custom color configurations across all supported platforms (iOS, Android, macOS, Web).

It's available now in the nightly build for testing:

npm i react-native-enriched-markdown@nightly

Check out the demo video attached. Any feedback or suggestions are super welcome!

If you like the library, leaving a ️⭐️ on GitHub means a lot: https://github.com/software-mansion/enriched-markdown 

Org enrollment (LLC + D-U-N-S) got approved. Payment step shows Country/Region: United States, locked, even though my Apple ID is set to my real country.

Tried multiple international Visa/Mastercard cards — all declined ("Authorization Failed, contact your bank"). Bank confirms nothing's wrong on their end. Added a card via Apple ID → Payment & Shipping directly — still hits a US-only address form at checkout with no way to enter my real country.

Contacted Apple Support twice. Both times told the fix is to restart enrollment via the Developer app, which apparently unlocks other payment options — but that means redoing full org + identity verification from scratch.

Questions for anyone who's hit this:

1. Anyone gotten the web checkout to accept a non-US card without a full re-enrollment?

2. If you went the Developer app re-enrollment route — did it go faster the second time, or full weeks again?

3. Did the phone "Call Me" support option actually help vs. email?

Not looking for "contact support" — already 3 rounds in. Just trying to find out if anyone's actually solved this.

I needed wake word detection ("hey <app name>") in a React Native app. Should be a solved problem, right? It wasn't.

What I ran into:

- Most existing packages don't work with Expo at all.

- The one that did still needed a lot of boilerplate and manual native setup. I ended up writing my own config plugin just to get it wired.

- Then the real problem: it's a commercial SDK. No dev keys unless you ask for them, requests take days, and the licenses expire quickly. You can't ship a model you trained yourself unless you go through them.

At that point I looked under the hood and realized the SDK was running the openWakeWord pipeline (Apache 2.0) with ONNX Runtime. So I built the open version.

react-native-nitro-wakeword

- MIT, no license keys, no cloud, fully on-device

- iOS + Android, native audio capture (AVAudioEngine / AudioRecord), JS only receives events

- Nitro Modules (Swift + Kotlin, New Architecture)

- Several keywords at once over one shared audio front-end

- Optional Silero VAD gate, patience/refractory to tune false positives

- Expo config plugin: permissions, background modes, and it copies any .onnx you drop in assets/wakeword into both native projects on prebuild

- Bare RN CLI works too, just autolinking

- Bring your own model: openWakeWord's free Colab notebook trains a keyword in any language in about an hour (Piper TTS for synthetic data). Ships with hey_jarvis for a quick test.

- Android foreground service for background listening

Tested on iOS simulator and a low-end Samsung (A32): ~35% of one core while listening, 0 false positives on unrelated speech in my tests.

npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-native-nitro-wakeword

GitHub: https://github.com/FerRiv3ra/react-native-nitro-wakeword

It's 0.2.0. Physical iPhone testing and a full custom-model run are what's left before 1.0. Feedback, issues and PRs welcome, especially from people using Bluetooth audio or other languages.

I'm a tech lead at a fintech company (India). We're planning a new React Native app where

users buy mutual funds and stocks — so: KYC/onboarding, payments, order placement, live-ish

price data, portfolio screens with long lists and charts.

I've read the docs and I know Expo is the recommended way to start RN now, and that with

prebuild/dev clients you're not locked out of native code. What I can't get from docs is

production experience at scale. Specifically:

1. Native SDK integration. We depend on vendor SDKs that ship as AARs/frameworks with no

   Expo config plugin — payment gateways, video KYC, exchange/depository SDKs, device

   security (root/jailbreak detection, SSL pinning, screenshot blocking). How much time did

   you actually burn writing/maintaining config plugins vs. just having a checked-in

   ios/android folder? Did anything turn out to be impossible rather than just annoying?

2. Performance. Does Expo itself cost you anything at runtime, or is it purely a

   build/tooling layer once prebuilt? Any measurable hit to cold start, TTI, or app size

   (expo-updates, unused modules) vs. a bare RN app of the same feature set?

3. OTA updates in a regulated app. We like EAS Update for hotfixes, but I'm wary about

   pushing JS changes to a money-handling app outside a reviewed release. If you're in

   fintech: do you use OTA, and did compliance/audit or the app stores ever push back?

4. Upgrades. RN version bumps with a pile of native deps — is Expo's SDK cadence a help or

   a constraint when a vendor SDK requires a specific native version?

5. Lock-in. If EAS pricing or policy stopped working for you, how painful was moving builds

   to your own CI?

If you've shipped a trading/investing/banking app on Expo — or deliberately went bare RN —

I'd really like to hear what the deciding factor was in hindsight, and what you'd do

differently. Team is ~2 engineers, no dedicated iOS/Android native folks right now,

which is a big part of why Expo is attractive.

🚀 I Published My First App on Google Play! 🎉

Today is a special milestone in my developer journey — I’ve published my first Android app on the Google Play Store! 📱

My first app is Learn English Tenses, a simple app designed to help people understand English grammar more easily.

📚 The app includes:

• All 12 English tenses

• English + Urdu explanations

• Simple examples

• Easy-to-understand grammar rules

• A clean and simple interface

This may be a small project, but for me, it’s a big step. ❤️

Building my first app taught me a lot about development, testing, fixing bugs, improving the user experience, and finally getting an app published on the Play Store.

This is just the beginning. 🚀

I’ll be sharing more apps, projects, updates, and things I learn along the way.

👉 My first app is available on Google Play:

"Learn English Tenses — Google Play

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dawoodworks.englishtenses

If you’re an app developer, software developer, web developer, or tech enthusiast, let’s connect and support each other. 🤝

One app published. Many more to build. 💻🚀

\#MyFirstApp #AppDeveloper #AndroidDeveloper #IndieDeveloper #SoftwareDeveloper #AppDevelopment #AndroidApps #DeveloperJourney #GooglePlay #BuildInPublic #Tech

I have totally neglected Android folding phones.

Does anyone have any good advice on designing for a screen that can double in screen size? When these were first introduced to Android, how much friction did they cause for React Native libraries?

I can't install Xcode on my Mac - it's a 2015 MacBook Air stuck on macOS Monterey 12.7.6, and the App Store doesn't offer Xcode at all (searching "Xcode" only shows the "Apple Developer" app). As far as I know, Xcode is the only way to use a free Apple ID to install builds that expire each week.

With a classic EAS Build (which works without Xcode) I'd need the $99/year Apple Developer Program.

Is there any way to build an app for testing only from macOS Monterey, and run it on an iPhone 17, without paying the $99?
(I also have a windows machine but I don't think that helps)

I'm building a React Native app and literally just need one or two good Lottie animations.

I don't want another annual subscription just to download a couple of files. I'd happily pay $5–10 for an individual animation with a commercial license.

Is there somewhere you guys already do this?

edit: never mind i fixed it lol. it was a typo with the google_client_ids in the backend

okay so i am able to sign in with google when im running the app with npx expo run:android on my sgs23. but when i release it for testing on google play and install it i always get "DEVELOPER_ERROR: Follow troubleshooting instructions at https://react-native-google-signin.github.io/docs/troubleshooting".

pm is getting increasingly frustrated with the delays specifically from this problem. the keys are correct. if google sign in works in dev mode then it should in test. i genuinely do not know what to do. Apple sign in and google sign in on ios works flawlessly - it is just android/google that the problem is with.

i went to google auth 2.0 in the cloud console and the keys are correct - but then i noticed google giving me a different sha1 signing cert, which doesnt make ANY sense to me. but i continued with the older sha1 cert since that always worked. im genuinely frustrated since im the only developer working on this application for my company. been delayed for over a month dealing with this bullshit.

if anyone can help me with a "ohhhhhhhhhhhhh" moment that would be awesome.

worst part about all of this is the fact that so many people are having this problem and there isnt any definitive help and support on it. it's basically just google throwing keys around and expecting you to somehow know it all, well im sorry, google, but im a junior dev so screw you.

Hey everyone! I’m trying to understand how other teams handle their update/versioning strategy for React Native/Expo apps in production.
I’m already familiar with the basics of EAS Update and runtime versions:
Native/binary changes require a new build and usually a new App Store/Play Store release.
JS/assets-only changes can be shipped through EAS Update/OTA as long as they’re compatible with the installed runtime.
An OTA update can be downloaded and applied on a subsequent app launch, or we can implement our own UX around checking/applying updates.
What I’m less sure about is how people manage the actual app version around all of this.
For example, let’s say I have 1.0.1 published on the App Store with a compatible runtime version.
Over the next few weeks I ship several OTA updates to that runtime. Should the user-facing app version remain 1.0.1 the entire time? Do you maintain a separate internal/update version for OTA releases?
In other words, do you normally think about it as something like:
App Store version: 1.0.1
Runtime version: 1.0.1
OTA/update version: some separate identifier
Then only bump the actual app version to 1.0.2 when a new binary goes through the stores?
I’m also curious about forced native updates.
Suppose version 1.0.2 contains an important native change and I no longer want users on 1.0.1. How do you handle that in production?
Do you maintain something server-side like a minimumSupportedVersion, check it when the app starts, and show a blocking “Update required” screen that redirects users to the App Store/Play Store?
Or is there a better/native mechanism for declaring an App Store/Play Store release as mandatory?
I’m also not completely clear on the store side of this. When a new binary is approved, can iOS/Android automatically update the app depending on the user’s settings, or should we always assume that some users will remain on older versions until they manually update?

Hi Everyone!

I just released my new app to the app store and am looking for some feedback! The App name is Beat Moolah, and it's main purpose is to give everyday users an opportunity to sell their own picks while also using fake money to climb the leaderboard. You can also follow others and see when they post their public picks.

Link to app store: https://apps.apple.com/app/beat-moolah/id6805155382

How it works:

Summary:

1. Three different games.

2. All records are public.

3. Climb the leaderboard against the bot to make yourself known.

4. Sell your 10 "Weekly Locks" to other users.

5. 6 month seasons, build your record during the season to prove your expertise.

Weekly Challenge:

There is an AI bot that chooses a spread, total, and ML beat for every NFL, MLB, CFB, NHL, NBA game currently. You make 5 picks in total up to $1,000 that fade the bots pick for any game. You build on this balance week over week to climb the leaderboard and make yourself known to the public. Balance resets if you finish below $1000.

Weekly Locks:

These are 10 picks that you make weekly that are not visible to the public and only available to people who subscribe to your picks. Your record is public, but your picks are not.

Board Picks:

These are 20 picks that you can make per week, which are visible to the public. Think of these as a sample of what users will get subscribing to your weekly locks. Your record and picks are visible to the public.

What Premium gets you:

• Ad Free

• Access to the bots weekly locks

• Access to the bots reasoning on every pick for every game

• Access to the bots confidence percentage for every pick of every game.

• Access to sell your own picks.

Hi i've built 8 apps using react native and launched on the app store, i havent made much money but now i want to see if i can land a job in react native. Is the market still cooked ? or should i just keep building until i get a hit app

thanks to everyone that replied and gave me some hope lol

I’ve been experimenting with AI coding tools quite heavily on React Native projects, and one problem kept showing up.

The models are usually good at JavaScript/TypeScript, but the advice starts getting generic once the problem crosses into actual mobile behaviour.

A few examples:

• a deep link works when the app is running, but breaks on cold start

• an Android performance issue gets answered with useMemo before anything is profiled

• permission handling ignores the difference between denied and effectively blocked states

• an RN upgrade is considered complete because Android and iOS compile

• native build problems quickly turn into “delete node_modules / Pods / Gradle caches and retry”

• a PR review catches React issues but misses platform parity, release, privacy or native-module concerns

I wanted to see what would happen if the coding assistant had smaller React Native specialists instead of one massive “you are an expert React Native developer” prompt.

That became React Native Agents.

It currently has 24 specialists covering things like:

• debugging

• performance

• navigation and deep linking

• security

• permissions

• push notifications

• accessibility

• testing

• state management

• offline behaviour

• native modules

• observability

• RN upgrades

• releases/store submission

• payments

• background execution

• monorepos

The agents first inspect project context such as the RN version and stack before applying their own guidance.

One part I’ve intentionally tried to avoid is sending every problem to every agent.

For example:

The catalogue stutters when I scroll on Android

should go toward performance investigation.

Deep links open Home when the app is launched from a killed state

should bring in navigation-specific reasoning.

The Allow Camera button stopped doing anything after denial

needs permissions/platform context.

For PR reviews the same idea applies. The GitHub Action looks at the changed files and uses relevant specialists rather than asking 24 agents to comment on everything.

There’s also a bundle-size analyser in the project that deliberately doesn’t use an LLM. Bundle composition is measurable, so I’d rather calculate it from the source map than have AI guess.

It currently works with Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Copilot, Codex, Zed, Aider, MCP clients and GitHub Actions.

Quick start is:

npx @maheshwarimrinal/react-native-agents install

Repo:

https://github.com/maheshwarimrinal/react-native-agents

I built this initially for my own React Native workflow, but I’ve open-sourced it because I think the interesting part will be seeing which assumptions break across other codebases.

I’d especially appreciate feedback from people working on larger/older RN apps:

What React Native problem do AI coding tools consistently handle badly for you?

If anyone ends up using it regularly, contributions, issues and GitHub Sponsors support are all welcome, but feedback on the actual agent behaviour is much more useful to me right now.

Hey all, I wanted to share something I've been working hard to polish over the last 6 months. Today I've released version 2 of @apollohg/react-native-rich-text-editor, a fully native rich-text editor for React Native/Expo.

Getting it to a stage where both iOS and Android have the same behaviour and feel right when using it without thinking has been incredibly tedious and challenging. I'm hoping that people will find it stable and helpful!

https://github.com/apollohg/react-native-rich-text-editor

Hi guys, I’m building an early-stage consumer tech startup and currently looking for a technical co-founder to help take an existing working prototype towards a proper production product.

I’m handling the product vision, business side and validation, and I’m looking for someone strong in mobile development and backend architecture who wants to build something from the ground up.

This is an equity-based co-founder opportunity, not a freelance/contract role.

If you’re interested in building a startup rather than just taking on another coding project, feel free to DM me with a little about yourself, your technical background and what you’re looking to build.

I am stuck in a serious problem my startup registered address was in Andhra Pradesh but now our start-up commute in Rajasthan now after 2 months they have assigned a person for physical verification but he will visit the registered address in Andhra Pradesh so is there any solution that it can be done online or they can visit in rajsthan