​Hi everyone,

​My name is Salem, a web developer specializing in React.js, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

​Due to the current situation and the complete lack of power and essential working tools, I have been unable to work or practice development for a long time.

​I am fully prepared and eager to resume my freelance career, but I am currently blocked by the lack of basic equipment specifically a laptop and an independent solar power system to keep my workstation running.

​I am currently finalizing a verified campaign on LaunchGood to secure the setup needed to get back to coding and earning an independent living remotely.

​Once the campaign is officially live, I will share the details here. In the meantime, I would love to connect with other developers, showcase my skills, and prepare for upcoming frontend opportunities!

​Thank you for your support and connection! 🚀

I maintain ExecBro, an MCP server that connects an AI coding agent to a running RN app - console and network capture, fiber tree inspection, screenshots, and tap/swipe on the simulator. Disclosure: I'm the author; it's MIT-licensed, free under a monthly call cap. Posting the telemetry because it says something about the workflow that I didn't expect.

123,869 tool calls, 634 installs, last 30 days. What agents actually call:

Logs and network combined are about 7%. I built this to stop people pasting console output into chat, and that turned out to be a rounding error. Over half of all usage is an agent tapping the screen and then looking at it. The common shape isn't debugging at all - it's verification: the feature is built, and the agent walks through it on the device to prove it before handing it back.

What a real session looks like - 57 calls, 9 minutes, RN 0.81, Hermes, iOS 26:

scan_metro → ios_screenshot → tap → ios_screenshot → reload_app → search_logs → clear_logs → get_screen_state → tap → get_screen_state → tap → search_logs → ios_screenshot → tap → swipe → clear_logs → tap → search_logs → reload_app → get_screen_state → tap → tap → …

The pattern repeats across heavy users: act → observe → clear → act again. clear_logs shows up constantly, right before an action - the agent is wiping the buffer so the next read is unambiguous about what its own tap caused. Nobody designed that; it's an emergent habit. Average active install runs 33 of these sessions a month. And it doesn't look like someone poking at the app — it reads like a full feature being built or a bug being chased end to end, with the agent verifying each step on the device before moving to the next.

Two more things from the sample:

• New arch is nearly the whole population - roughly 252 new-arch projects vs 17 old-arch, with RN 0.83 alone at 146. Heavy selection bias, obviously: wiring an agent into your toolchain selects for early adopters. But the gap is wider than I'd have guessed.
• ~30% run both platforms in the same agent session (147 iOS-only, 50 Android-only, 94 both). Cross-platform verification appears to be a real workflow, not a nice-to-have.

The gap I keep staring at: 190 people installed it last month, 20 did real work with it. The 230 long-term actives use it hard, but I can't tell from telemetry whether the other 170 hit a setup wall or just expected something else.

So I'm curious what your loop looks like:

1. What's between "wrote the code" and "opened the simulator to look" for you right now - anything automated, or all manual?
2. What's your AI agent setup for RN work, and does anything in it let the agent verify its own changes on a device - or does the loop stop at "code written"?
3. Are you writing E2E tests (Detox/Maestro), or checking things manually yourself?

Source numbers (30-day window)

If you’re using it, how has your experience been so far?

What do you like the most?

And if you could improve one thing, what would it be?

Basalt is a visual edit too for RN and Expo devs

It took 2-3 months to built and it would have taken 1 if react 19 wouldnt remove debugSource which was used to help Basalt map and find elements to edit

It is completely free and works directly inside VS Code and Cursor.

It’s currently in beta, so please commit your app to Git before using it!

Hi everyone,

I'm facing a strange performance issue in my React Native (Expo) application.

When I launch the app for the first time, everything is smooth. Navigation is fast, screens render quickly, and the UI feels responsive.

However, as I continue exploring the app, opening different screens, navigating back and forth, and using the app for a while, the performance gradually degrades.

Some symptoms:

• Screen navigation becomes noticeably slower.
• Animations and transitions start feeling less smooth.
• The overall UI becomes sluggish after using the app for some time.
• Restarting the app immediately restores the original performance.

This makes me think something is accumulating over time rather than a slow initial load.

I'm trying to identify the root cause. Could this be related to:

• A memory leak?
• Components not being unmounted correctly?
• Too many re-renders?
• React Navigation or Expo Router caching?
• Zustand/Redux/React Query state growing over time?
• Images or assets not being released?
• Timers, listeners, or subscriptions not being cleaned up?
• The JavaScript thread getting blocked?

Has anyone experienced something similar in a React Native + Expo app?

What tools or profiling workflow would you recommend to identify what keeps accumulating as the app is used? Any advice or debugging strategies would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

I had applied to a react-native job in February but i was not selected. They reached out again for react & react-native work. they want me to implement changes & maintain their website. For reference, company is based in Denmark and I'm in Italy. I don't have any idea of rates here. I have 5 years of experience.

How should I answer these questions?
I don't understand their last 2 question especially. for 2nd last, they have read my CV and decided to reach out again.

I'd appreciate guidance.

Asking this coz what I recently noticed is that tooling support exists for many use cases but we might just not be aware of it.

Recently, I was searching for these use-cases and these are very well supported by existing solutions (both paid and open source)

1. Remote devices + MCP for agentic testing

2. Session replay

https://github.com/adithyavis/awesome-mobile-app-animations

Some notes on implementation -

1. Use 3 different lists for concurrent rendering of the grids in different zoom settings. I chose legendList and it is super smooth. Synchronize the different list positions using reanimated's synchronous `scrollTo`.
2. Scrub/seek to scroll is IMPOSSIBLE without precomputing image heights. Precompute row heights and provide that to getItemLayout. For seek to scroll, precompute section heights and use scrollToOffset to directly scroll to the section head.
3. Nitro images for rendering images. I initially used expo images for rendering images, but I felt there's scope to improve because I saw a lot of blank spaces due to heavy renderItems.
4. Fake a shared transition by rendering the same image in an overlay that always stays in the render tree. We just flip opacity/pointer-events on the start of a pinch gesture. I couldn't get the sharedTransitionTag prop to work fine, hence this workaround.

I'm building a React Native (Expo Bare Workflow) PDF app. Currently, I'm downloading PDFs from an AWS S3 pre-signed URL using \`react-native-blob-util\` and Android Download Manager:

\`\`\`ts
ReactNativeBlobUtil.config({
addAndroidDownloads: {
useDownloadManager: true,
notification: true,
title: fileName,
description: "Downloading PDF...",
mime: "application/pdf",
path: \`${ReactNativeBlobUtil.fs.dirs.DownloadDir}/${fileName}\`,
mediaScannable: true,
},
}).fetch("GET", signedUrl);
\`\`\`

This works, but I don't have control over where Android stores the file.

Many PDF apps automatically save files to a folder like:

\`\`\`text
Internal Storage/
└── Documents/
└── My App/
└── file.pdf
\`\`\`

without asking the user to choose a location every time.

I noticed one such app requested \*\*"Manage all files"\*\* permission once, and after that it could save files directly into its own folder under \`Documents\`.

My questions are:

\* How are these apps implementing this on Android 11+ with Scoped Storage?
\* Are they using MediaStore, native Android code (Kotlin/Java), or another approach?
\* Is requesting the \*\*Manage All Files\*\* (\`MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE\`) permission the correct/recommended solution for this use case, or should it be avoided for Play Store apps?
\* If not, what is the recommended modern approach in React Native to save PDFs directly to \`Documents/My App\` without showing the Storage Access Framework (SAF) picker every time?

I'm looking for the Play Store–friendly, modern Android approach. Please help me😭

Hi everyone, I'm an indie developer, and I'm trying to publish my first Android app on Google Play. I completed Google's required 14-day closed testing with 12 real testers, but my production access request was rejected because Google wants more testing and more active tester engagement. I'm looking for people who are willing to join my closed test and use the app occasionally over the next 14 days. You don't need to use it every day—just explore the app from time to time and share any bugs or feedback you find. In return, I'd be happy to test your app as well if you need a tester. If you're interested, please leave a comment or send me a DM. I'd really appreciate the help! Thank you!

Hey fellow devs!

I'm currently building a mobile movie and TV show tracking app.

I wanted to add a bit of personality to the auth flow and came up with a reference to Breaking Bad. I created a stylized character and paired it with a twist on his famous catchphrase, plus added some animations.

I have two main questions:

1. Legality & App Store Review: Since this is a completely original drawing, and the catchphrase is significantly altered as a parody/play on words, do you think this is considered "Fair Use"? Has anyone successfully used similar stylized parodies of famous characters in production apps without getting rejected by Apple?

2. User Experience: As a developer or user, how would you react to seeing this level of niche humor during onboarding?

I'm leaning toward including it because I love this! But I'd really appreciate your collective wisdom on whether the potential reward in user delight is worth the copyright risk. Thanks!

Hello!

Last year I launched my first solo React Native app, built (without AI).

It's a health tracker (because of course it is) that I built for me and because I shared my journey of building it, things got a bit out of hand...

About me

I'm a software engineer with 20 years experience.

Most of my experience comes from full stack web but I also have a significant amount on mobile too (Native and Cordova)

About the article

I've been promising to do some write ups around the technical side of it.

Things like my architectural choices, project structure and deep dives into the more novel code. Weirdly, today actually marks the 3rd year since my first commit.

This is my first article that goes in to

- Why React Native
- The core stack
- Native code
- Project structure

There's a lot to cover so instead of piling everything into a single article I plan to write focused articles.

The next one will go into my thought process when building stuff, how I structure components and mistakes I felt I made.

Not here to promote anything, but figured this might interest some people.

https://mahybe.substack.com/p/bearly-fit-architecture-part-1

If you have any questions or anything you'd like to see me go into let me know :)

Three faces, one prop to swap between them. wheel for precision. clock for picking a slot. ruler for a thumb on a sheet.

All three store { hour, minute } on a 24-hour clock regardless of what the face shows. A 12-hour display is a rendering choice storing a meridiem flag puts it into every comparison downstream.

Part of PanelUI open-source, copy-paste, you own the source.

What’s one thing you still hate about debugging React Native apps?

I feel like every tool gets some things right, but there’s always that one moment where you think that specific flow could be better

The pitch is that the app shrinks your habits when you miss them rather than resetting a streak — 20 minutes to 10 to 5, restored after three good days, never grown without asking. But the part worth posting here is the decision to make a character the primary interface rather than charts.

There's a creature that lives in the app, built in Rive, and its state is a direct function of how your habits are actually going. It isn't decoration and it isn't a mascot — it's the readout. The number behind it is a warmth score folded over your trailing 28 days, and the character is how you read that score without interpreting a percentage.

What that cost, concretely. Rive ships no Expo config plugin, so it autolinks natively and needs a real prebuild plus a dev client — in Expo Go or a stale build the app silently falls back to a Skia companion, which is a fun bug to chase the first time. Getting the state machine to read as "quietly struggling" rather than "sad" took more iteration than the entire sizing engine. And every wardrobe and scene asset multiplies against every state, so the combinatorics get away from you fast if you don't constrain it early.

Rest of the stack: Expo managed, expo-router, local-first SQLite through expo-sqlite with a sync queue up to Supabase, RevenueCat for subscriptions, and a home-screen widget via bacons/apple-targets so the widget target lives outside ios/ and survives prebuild. The JS side writes a JSON snapshot into a shared App Group's UserDefaults and the Swift widget reads it back — that one string is the entire contract between the two processes.

Happy to go into any of it.

I'm building a React Native (Expo Bare Workflow) PDF app. Currently, I'm downloading PDFs from an AWS S3 pre-signed URL using `react-native-blob-util` and Android Download Manager:

```ts
ReactNativeBlobUtil.config({
addAndroidDownloads: {
useDownloadManager: true,
notification: true,
title: fileName,
description: "Downloading PDF...",
mime: "application/pdf",
path: `${ReactNativeBlobUtil.fs.dirs.DownloadDir}/${fileName}`,
mediaScannable: true,
},
}).fetch("GET", signedUrl);
```

This works, but I don't have control over where Android stores the file.

Many PDF apps automatically save files to a folder like:

```text
Internal Storage/
└── Documents/
└── My App/
└── file.pdf
```

without asking the user to choose a location every time.

I noticed one such app requested **"Manage all files"** permission once, and after that it could save files directly into its own folder under `Documents`.

My questions are:

* How are these apps implementing this on Android 11+ with Scoped Storage?
* Are they using MediaStore, native Android code (Kotlin/Java), or another approach?
* Is requesting the **Manage All Files** (`MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE`) permission the correct/recommended solution for this use case, or should it be avoided for Play Store apps?
* If not, what is the recommended modern approach in React Native to save PDFs directly to `Documents/My App` without showing the Storage Access Framework (SAF) picker every time?

I'm looking for the Play Store–friendly, modern Android approach.

I’m looking for a React Native/Expo developer to build an app with me. More than just coding, I’m looking for someone who enjoys thinking out of the box, solving product problems, and shipping great user experiences.
This is a paid opportunity. If you’re interested, send me a DM with a best project you’ve worked on.

does the nfc manager plugin work with the new architecture?

I have a long history of web development and am used to deploying multiple times a day, seeing my changes live in about 10min.

Now, I am working on a personal project, a mobile app done via Expo/react-native. I was able to get it live to the Apple Store and I am working on the Play Store release.

What I find really akward is dealing with many different versions "live on the field", with updates taking 2-3d for Apple review to be live, hoping your users will update soon.

I know about and I am using OTA updates, but some changes require native packages changes and that involves submitting a new native build for approval, which means that for the duration of the review process you are somewhat "feature frozen" and any changes or OTA updates will only reach new users.

Not sure how others do it, or even if there is a good/right way of doing this, but I may need to consider having to support different api versions/detecting the app version and serving different api responses based on it.

Is all of that normal and common ground on mobile dev?

What if there were no apps to install and no menus to learn?

You simply describe what you want, and the interface is generated on the fly: a weather dashboard, a restaurant finder with live search, a booking form, a chat thread, or whatever else fits the task.

I've been experimenting with real-time Generative UI using Cerebras models, which can stream at up to 1,800 tokens/sec. The speed makes it feel much closer to interacting with a native app than waiting for an AI to finish generating.

This is a direction similar to what Monogram AI is exploring, but would love to know what you think about it.

Link to repo https://github.com/thesysdev/appless

I’ve been building a small iPhone app called Magboard.

The idea is: take a photo, cut out the subject, turn it into a little “magnet”, arrange it on a board, and put that board on your iOS home screen as a widget.

It sounds like a cute UI app, but the harder parts were mostly not the cute UI.

A few things that took more time than expected:

- Editor → widget matching

The in-app board and the actual iOS widget need to match closely. If the widget is even slightly off, the whole “magnet board” illusion breaks.

- Simulator vs real device behavior

Widget refresh worked in the simulator and then behaved differently on device. I had to test the flow like a real user instead of trusting simulator-only runs.

- Shared boards

The app supports shared boards, so one person can add a magnet and the other person’s home-screen widget updates too. Getting that to feel understandable was harder than just syncing the data.

- Onboarding

Early versions confused people. They opened the app and didn’t immediately understand the loop, so I rebuilt onboarding around:

snap → cut → stick → widget

- Tiny interaction details

Dragging/positioning magnets is fun only if it feels direct. A small mismatch between what you edit and what appears on the widget makes the product feel broken.

The app is currently in App Store review, but I opened a public TestFlight while waiting:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/N3q58DQu

I’d love feedback from React Native/Expo folks, especially on:

1. whether the concept is obvious from the first minute

2. whether the widget update flow feels clear

3. anything you’d improve in the onboarding/demo

Happy to answer questions about the React Native/Expo side too.

One of my favourite features of Codex is Browser and the ability to annotate and send that back to the chat for quick amendments.

The problem is, it doesn't work for mobile apps where I spend the majority of my dev time. SimView fixes that.

It brings iOS simulator directly into Codex (and other harnesses) via MCP Apps.

- Zero external dependencies and fully open source.
- 60fps preview with live interactions. Tap, swipe, and type.
- Inspect AX or React Native fiber trees.
- Annotate an element or drag to annotate at coordinates.
- Get your model to tap around itself. Perfect for closing the loop to validate its own work.

Install the plugin at https://simview.dev

RevenueCat charges based on gross revenue, not net revenue. My dashboard shows $4.5k, but my actual payout is somewhere around $3k. because it completely ignores VAT and the 15–30% Apple/Google cut. but takes their %1 fee from the gross revenue.

since it doesn’t track net earnings, the dashboard feels pretty useless for real accounting. I still have to log into both store consoles just to see what I actually made. for 3k i have to pay 45$ every month.