After a sneak peek a few weeks ago, we finally got the full React Native 0.81 release, and it’s a big one.
- First of all, Android 16 (API 36) is now supported by default. To comply with Google’s edge-to-edge UI requirements, SafeAreaView has been deprecated. Users can opt into alternatives, like react-native-safe-area-context, and the React Native team advises migrating your SafeAreaView project before it’s deprecated in the future.
- Predictive back gestures are enabled by default as well. If your app uses custom native code for back handling (for example, overriding the onBackPressed() method), manual migration of your code or temporary opt-out might be necessary.
- The JavaScriptCore (JSC) engine is now a community-maintained package, released separately from React Native. Apps needing JavaScriptCore should switch to the community package.
- The 0.81 update also introduced precompiled iOS builds, a result of cooperation between Meta and Expo. You can enable precompiled RN iOS builds, cutting build times by up to 10×.
- To use them, when running pod install, specify the following variables:
RCT_USE_RN_DEP=1 RCT_USE_PREBUILT_RNCORE=1 bundle exec pod install. Note that you won’t be able to debug and step into React Native’s internals. - Likewise, prebuilds are not supported in Xcode 26 Beta, and to use them, you have to set the SWIFT_ENABLE_EXPLICIT_MODULES flag to NO in your Xcode project.
React Native 0.81 is a great example of cooperation between Meta and RN community. We’re looking forward to seeing what the future might bring for our favorite mobile framework.
Read the full release notes
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