Shopify moves back to Native from React Native

Building mobile apps for both iOS and Android is now significantly faster and cheaper.

Shopify is transitioning its mobile applications from React Native back to native iOS (Swift) and Android (Kotlin) development. This strategic shift, announced for completion by 2026, reverses a decision made in 2020 to adopt React Native for its cross-platform development benefits. The primary driver for this change is the significant advancement in AI coding agents. These agents have dramatically reduced the cost and effort previously associated with building and maintaining separate native codebases. Shopify found that using AI tools, it could now effectively rebuild and maintain features in Swift and Kotlin at a speed and efficiency comparable to, or better than, React Native. The company will continue to support its React Native open-source libraries, such as React Native Skia and FlashList, through transitions or archiving. The migration of major applications like the Shop app has already begun, utilizing a new AI-assisted system called Helix for a more controlled and efficient rewrite process.

The decision by Shopify to return to native mobile development marks a pivotal moment, signaling that advancements in AI coding agents have fundamentally altered the economics of cross-platform versus native app development. While React Native offered advantages in code reusability and developer accessibility, the new AI capabilities diminish the 'build once, deploy twice' benefit. Shopify's experience suggests that the dual costs of native development—implementation, maintenance, and parity checks—can now be largely absorbed by AI, re-emphasizing the performance and platform integration strengths of native code.

This shift has profound implications for the mobile development landscape, potentially accelerating a broader industry move back towards native development for complex applications where platform-specific features and performance are paramount. Developers and companies will need to re-evaluate their technology stacks, considering how AI agents can be integrated to streamline native development workflows, mitigate the traditional costs, and leverage deeper platform capabilities. The success of Shopify's Helix system, which uses AI for controlled, iterative native code generation, will likely serve as a blueprint for others navigating this evolving technical terrain.