React Native 0.60 Update: Features That Make React Native More Native than Ever Before

React Native has known the world over as one of the most popular open-source frameworks for mobile app development. Developed and nurtured by Facebook within a few years, it became a dominant name among the most reliable technologies for all kinds of apps across the niches. Facebook built React Native to minimize the dependence on web technologies like HTML and enhance more reliance on native technologies.

React Native now came with the latest .60 update. The new update has already become the talk of the app developers because of several key enhancements. Since for every React Native developer, these feature enhancements are of huge significance, let us list out and explain a few of them.

New Accessibility Features

When it comes to the accessibility, the new React Native 0.60 version comes loaded with a whole bunch of critical enhancements through the new accessibility APIs for both iOS and Android platforms. The best thing is that the improved accessibility features use native APIs of the mobile OS platforms directly, and this further makes integrating accessibility features with mobile platforms easier than ever before.

Let’s see the critical enhancements with the accessibility features of React Native 0.60.

• Multiple roles are added to the components.
• A new Accessibility States API is there to deliver better web support.
• Android developers can now draw from AccessibilityInfo.announceForAccessibility.
• There are several other value additions.

All-New Screen

The 0.60 version of React Native offers a new and improved app screen with unmatched user-friendliness. From offering several effective instructions like Documents links, editing App.js, ways for aligning with new web design, etc., the new screen will also offer a much-improved UI called “Hello world” to induct the users to the more robust and feature-rich React Native development ecosystem.

AndroidX Support

Another great feature of the new React Native 0.60 is the out of the box support for AndroidX. This further support included in the React Native .60 will help to switch the React Native with the help of AndroidX or Android Extension Library. Apart from regular switching and migration, native codes and the dependencies will also be migrated with it.

There is one small issue related to this migration. This switching or migration has one big constraint. There is a compulsion for all React Native apps to use AndroidX. Though there is a temporary solution brought up by the developers of the React Native .60, this solution is called Jetifier, which is basically an AndroidX transition tool. It allows optimum compatibility and working support for React Native.

Auto-linking for OS

The best thing about React Native .60, which will be recognized by every mobile app developer, is that the libraries of React Native offer native platform-specific code. The latest framework update helps to find the native code for any project. This auto-linking will make native building apps faster and easier than ever before. This crucial improvement has been a handy work of the React Native CLI team.

Out of the Box CocoaPods

Many iOS developers working in cross-platform development project using React Native know how CocoaPods package plays a crucial role in their iOS part of development. Thanks to the React Native .60, now CocoaPods will come packed for the React Native app developers to use it for iOS part of the app development project.

This is not the only advantage of this excellent value addition. This inbuilt package is also coming as a highly compatible coding package to work with Xcode projects. The smooth compatibility of the package will help developers to debug an app with more efficiency.

As for grabbing this inbuilt support for the app projects, developers need to take the little pain of incorporating some changes in the profile at the time of making the upgrade to .60 version. Another reassuring thing about this compatibility is that developers of React Native are already working on several issues concerning the compatibility, and we can expect patches to deal with similar issues.

Lean Core

Some changes with React Native .60 that may seem to be minor and insignificant can actually boost the efficiency of the cross-platform developers to a great extent. The different repositories for WebView and NetInfo are now done with, and both are migrated into one React Native repository together.

Apart from this, to help iOS integration better and smoother, some features have actually been extracted from their earlier repository and put into a dedicated and new one. For example, geolocation has been put into a separate repository to meet the requirements of the App Store better.

Upgrade Helper

Last but not the least of all value additions with the React Native .60 versions is the all-new Upgrade Helper tool. This simple and effective tool will help developers upgrading their React Native library to the latest version easily. When upgrading to the most recent React Native version, this tool will help developers keeping pace with several customization options and significant changes. The Upgrade Helper comes as a handy tool to keep track of all the changes that take place when upgrading to React Native .60 versions.

Conclusion

If you don’t forget too early, you probably could remember how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg just a few years ago almost repented about the company’s mistaken emphasis on web technologies instead of putting the bet on native platforms. Well, the present version of React Native .60 came as Facebook’s continuous commitment to increase reliance on native technologies. There is no wonder in the fact that React Native .60 is more native than any of the earlier versions of this powerful framework.