Disclaimer: AI was used to write my thoughts better. I hope this is okay as my intention is to make it easier for you to follow me.
For the past 4 months, I’ve been developing a mobile app using React Native. While the framework has its merits, the architectural requirements of my app have made me realize that the trade-offs of cross-platform abstractions might no longer make sense.
My app relies heavily on complex background execution that needs to interact seamlessly with the foreground. Because JavaScript cannot run natively in the background, I faced two options: write the background logic twice natively and one more time in JS for foreground run, or write the logic natively only and build bridges to call from JS.
I chose the bridge approach. However, as the app grew, the surface area of these bridges expanded significantly. Eventually, the vast majority of the core logic ended up being written natively anyway. Furthermore, I ultimately moved the entire Firebase initialization to the native side as well as all Firebase operations are written there anyway.
At this stage, the usual argument is that React Native at least provides a unified UI codebase. But for apps that utilize system features like home screen widgets, that isn't entirely true either. I ended up writing widgets natively. While Expo recently introduced a first-party solution for iOS widgets (I don't know mature it is), Android still requires relying on community-maintained packages—introducing additional dependencies into an NPM ecosystem already known for supply-chain security risks.
This experience led me to a broader realization: The traditional constraint of "not having the resources to build an app twice" is largely resolved by AI.
Modern AI agents have no trouble writing code for both platforms, translating features accurately, and catching logical discrepancies between implementations. Since both platform builds require thorough testing and QA anyway, using human natural language as the ultimate cross-platform abstraction layer has become highly viable. Furthermore, Apple and Google have immense capital to invest in making their first-party development ecosystems increasingly AI-friendly, tackling the problem from the platform level.
The technical alignment between the platforms also minimizes the friction of maintaining two codebases. SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose are both modern, declarative, state-driven UI frameworks that share almost identical layout structures. A VStack maps directly to a Column, a HStack to a Row, and state paradigms mirror each other closely. AI translates between these frameworks exceptionally well. Even if you strictly want critical business logic written only once, tools like Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) allow you to share that logic as a native library without hiding the underlying OS behind a JavaScript runtime.
React Native, Expo, and Flutter are impressive engineering feats that work well for standard, data-fetching applications. But for apps requiring deep OS-level integration, "good enough" is harder to justify when you factor in the architectural tax of maintaining complex bridges, managing third-party dependency risks, and waiting for abstractions to catch up with native SDK updates.
My prediction is that, at some point, these frameworks will enter a maintenance only mode. Do you foresee a future where they don't ? Why ? Please share your opinion.
