React Native

React Native is an open-source framework, created and maintained by Meta (formerly Facebook) and first released in 2015, for building mobile applications. Its central idea is that developers can write an app once in JavaScript and React — the same component-based approach used for web interfaces — and run it as a genuine native application on both iOS and Android from that single codebase. Crucially, React Native does not wrap a website in an app shell. When you write an interface element, the framework renders it as a real native UI component — an actual iOS view or Android widget — rather than HTML inside a web view. That is what the word native means here: the app uses the platform's own building blocks, so it looks and behaves like a native app while sharing most of its code across platforms.

The appeal is straightforward economics of engineering. Building separate native apps for iOS and Android traditionally means two teams, two codebases, and two sets of work; React Native lets one team share the bulk of the code across both platforms, cutting duplicated effort and speeding delivery. Because it uses JavaScript and React, teams with web skills can move into mobile without learning two entirely separate native languages. Beyond phones, React Native has grown to target other platforms as well. It is worth being clear about scope: React Native is a software engineering framework for building apps, not a marketing or analytics tool. It belongs in this glossary because it shapes how the products marketers work on are built and shipped, not because it is a martech category itself.

React Native sits between two other ways of building mobile apps, and the contrast defines it. On one side is fully native development — writing separate apps in each platform's own language and tools, which gives maximum control and platform fidelity but doubles the work. On the other side are web-based or hybrid approaches that render a website inside an app shell using a web view, which shares code easily but does not use the platform's real UI, so the result can feel less like a true native app. React Native takes a middle path that leans native: one shared JavaScript codebase, but rendered with genuine native components rather than a web view. So it aims for much of native's feel with much of hybrid's code-sharing efficiency.

It is also worth distinguishing React Native from React itself and from other cross-platform frameworks. React is Meta's library for building web user interfaces; React Native applies the same component model to build native mobile apps, so they share concepts but target different platforms. Among cross-platform mobile frameworks, React Native competes with options like Flutter, and the choice usually comes down to language and ecosystem — React Native uses JavaScript and React, which suits teams already fluent in that stack. The distinction to hold is that React Native is a native-rendering, single-codebase framework, not a web-view wrapper and not fully separate native development. That positioning is precisely why teams that want native quality without maintaining two codebases reach for it.

Using React Native well means recognizing what it is best at — sharing most of an app's code across iOS and Android while still delivering a genuinely native experience — and pairing it with native know-how where needed. Even with a shared codebase, some features touch platform-specific capabilities, so teams should expect to write or integrate native code for the parts that demand it and to test carefully on both platforms rather than assuming identical behavior. For organizations that already have web and JavaScript talent, React Native is a natural way to move into mobile without standing up two separate native teams. The goal is to capture the efficiency of one codebase without pretending the two platforms are truly identical.

The failure modes are treating React Native as a way to avoid all native knowledge (some features still require it), assuming a single codebase behaves identically on both platforms without platform-specific testing, and confusing it with a web-view hybrid that does not render native components. Another trap is choosing it purely on hype rather than on whether the team's skills and the app's needs fit its strengths. The discipline is to use React Native for what it does well — one JavaScript and React codebase rendering real native UI across iOS and Android — while investing in native testing and, where necessary, native code, so the app gains the efficiency of shared code without sacrificing the quality users expect from a native experience.

React Native — Meta's open-source framework for building native iOS and Android apps from one JavaScript and React codebase — renders genuine native UI, sharing effort without resorting to a web-view wrapper.

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