Lessons from Shopify's Migration to React Native with Mustafa Ali

This React Universe On Air episode is the culmination of a four-year-long journey. How come? 

In 2020, Shopify decided to switch to React Native for both new and existing apps. In November 2024, the migration of their mobile app was officially over, resulting in a remarkable 86% unification of code across platforms and a streamlined development process that stems from eliminating 1.8 million lines of redundant code, reducing build times, and achieving seamless feature parity between iOS and Android.

Much like every transformative journey, this migration to React Native is a rich source of lessons learned about embracing the cross-platform approach for a better development process, app performance, and business results.

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How Shopify Benefits from Migration to React Native

This episode is a double comeback: not only is React Native At Scale back, but we’re also happy to see Mike Grabowiski again as the podcast host! The third reason to celebrate is the topic of this episode: Shopify finishing the migration of its mobile app to React Native. To take a closer look at the decision-making process involved in this transformation, we invited Mustafa Ali, Shopify's Director of Engineering.

Throughout the episode, Mustafa shares the motivation behind the change, including the desire to avoid duplicating efforts across platforms and enable developers to work smoothly across both web and mobile. He discusses the challenges faced during the migration, such as ensuring performance parity in their high-usage point-of-sale app, where speed and reliability are crucial. 

Mustafa also shares how Shopify initially evaluated various technologies, ultimately choosing React Native because of its alignment with their existing JavaScript and TypeScript expertise and the framework’s support from Meta. He emphasizes the critical role of native developers in maintaining high performance and user experience, detailing how they tackled performance issues head-on.

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More on Shopify’s Migration to React Native

• Mustafa’s X thread on finishing Shopify’s migration to React Native
• Shopify’s article: React Native is the Future of Mobile at Shopify
• Shopify’s article: Migrating our Largest Mobile App to React Native
• Shopify's article: Five years of React Native at Shopify

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