Shopify moves back to Native from React Native
20 days ago
- Shopify's 2020 bet on React Native was highly successful, enabling cross-platform development and faster feature delivery.
- By 2025, improvements in large language models (LLMs) reduced the cost of building features natively for iOS and Android, prompting a reevaluation.
- LLM-powered agents can now implement features on one platform using the other as reference, helping developers work across stacks and lowering parity maintenance costs.
- Reevaluation led to a decision to migrate back to native (Swift and Kotlin) for Shopify's apps, starting with the Shop app.
- Greenfield migration was chosen over brownfield because LLMs can rebuild apps faster using React Native code as reference.
- Shopify built a system called Helix that incrementally rebuilds screens by checking each step with tests, visual review, and code review before moving on.
- To improve AI agent feedback loops, Shopify decouples business logic from UI, allowing headless execution via CLI for millisecond iterations.
- Shopify will continue supporting React Native Skia through 2026, find a long-term steward for FlashList, and archive Restyle.
- The migration aims to match or exceed current app quality in performance, stability, accessibility, and product experience.