Shopify moves back to Native from React Native

In January 2025, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke stated that the future of React Native was promising and that the company intended to continue investing in it. However, as coding models have significantly improved, Shopify has decided to revert to native development using Swift and Kotlin for their mobile apps. This decision was reached after a thorough evaluation and prototyping, demonstrating that the advantages of sharing implementation code are no longer as significant as the benefits of native development.

React Native has been integral to Shopify's development process since 2020, providing consistent benefits such as faster feature delivery and lower costs for maintaining a unified codebase. However, as artificial intelligence (AI) models have evolved, Shopify has been able to question the necessity of maintaining a dual-platform approach, as AI can now handle a substantial portion of the implementation, testing, and review tasks.

The decision to migrate from React Native back to native development was influenced by several factors. Shopify's developers found that the performance optimization efforts in React Native had become time-consuming, and the framework required frequent updates and dependency management. Moreover, LLMs became capable of handling complex tasks, making the decision to rebuild the apps from scratch more appealing.

The migration process began with the Shopify app, which featured over 300 screens, Apple Watch app, complications, Siri Shortcuts, and various other functionalities. The team successfully rebuilt this app in Swift and Kotlin within 12 weeks, aided by AI. Following this success, the company plans to migrate other large apps, such as the Shop app, Point of Sale, and Inbox, to native development using AI assistance.

Despite the shift back to native development, Shopify acknowledges the importance of their React Native libraries and aims to maintain their open-source libraries until the transition is complete. The company will continue to support critical issues and encourage other organizations to take over the stewardship of FlashList, a popular library for rendering high-performance lists in React Native.

Shopify's decision to revert to native development demonstrates their commitment to leveraging the latest tools and technologies to optimize their mobile apps while ensuring a smooth and well-planned transition for their users and the development community.