Products · Product
React Native
Raised as a usability problem by 92 people on Hacker News over 12 years (2015–2026), in 73 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1
- 2
Every issue, all time, most people first
Web-technology apps have laggy, non-native interfaces that feel wrongUnreviewed
20152026- Geometry processing in the app is unbearably slow, forcing native module workarounds2026-09-10
- Apps built with web technologies have laggy, non-native interfaces that feel wrong2026-03-22
- Reimplemented navigation behaves subtly differently from native, and the app feels slow2024-01-07
Upgrading projects is painful for mid-level developersUnreviewed
20152026- Found React Native too complicated to set up on desktop platforms2024-10-25
- Mixed React Native and native codebase is a nightmare for developers to traverse and maintain2022-08-02
- A React Native upgrade caused days of pain for the developer2022-06-23
Animation is much more tedious to implement than in UIKit or CSSUnreviewed
20152026- Animation library is cumbersome and painful to use everywhere2025-03-05
- Out-of-the-box screen animations are difficult to work with, requiring workarounds for less experienced developers2020-09-28
- Animations API is harder than CSS, needs lots of experience for complex effects2020-04-29
Busy JS thread freezes the UI until it is freedUnreviewed
20152026- App UI becomes laggy because the framework blocks the JS thread for up to a second2026-11-02
- Scrolling responds but button taps and text input do nothing when JS thread is busy2023-03-09
- Busy JS thread freezes UI, which can't rerender until freed2017-07-07
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- App UI becomes laggy because the framework blocks the JS thread for up to a second2026-11-02
- Docs are harder to dig through for specific settings than before2026-09-10
- Geometry processing in the app is unbearably slow, forcing native module workarounds2026-09-10
- Apps built with web technologies have laggy, non-native interfaces that feel wrong2026-03-22
- Errors surface as runtime failures with logs scattered across several locations, making debugging hard2025-09-15
- Animation library is cumbersome and painful to use everywhere2025-03-05
- Double-click, triple-click, context menu and keyboard shortcuts for text selection don't work2025-02-09
- Interfaces lack colour contrast, colourblind-safe colours and large touch targets2025-01-16
- Installation and linking are obscure and poorly documented, so few people understand them2025-01-08
- Found React Native too complicated to set up on desktop platforms2024-10-25
- Rendering 2000 views on Android takes about 300ms, slower than web2024-10-24
- Tapping a building has a noticeable delay before it highlights and shows information2024-06-01
- Breakage after an Expo update requires hours of debugging across layers2024-01-31
- Reimplemented navigation behaves subtly differently from native, and the app feels slow2024-01-07
- Author regrets choosing React Native for the Android parcel inventory app2023-12-13
- Updating one package breaks another with cryptic, hard-to-diagnose failures2023-09-26
- Too many overlapping tool choices with no clear guidance, so setup requires constant googling2023-08-14
- Controls look native but behave subtly off, and accessibility is often missing2023-08-07
- Keyboard navigation and screen reader announcements aren't automatic and framework bugs break them2023-05-24
- Scrolling responds but button taps and text input do nothing when JS thread is busy2023-03-09
- Tooling crashes and breaks with each SDK update, causing developer problems2023-01-31
- Apps respond too slowly on Android to be usable, especially on lower-end devices2023-01-05
- Apps feel slow, janky, inconsistent and break OS conventions, so users abandon them2023-01-01
- Cross-platform apps feel like web apps and lack a native mobile user experience2023-01-01
- Tapping a note header selects text and shows a system menu covering the options menu2022-12-31
- Installing it means following conflicting recipes and hitting many errors2022-11-15
- Awful debugging experience, outdated docs, and flaky cross-platform inconsistencies2022-10-03
- Mixed React Native and native codebase is a nightmare for developers to traverse and maintain2022-08-02
- A React Native upgrade caused days of pain for the developer2022-06-23
- Breakpoints randomly stop working after library updates, with no clear cause2022-05-12
- Naive React Native apps run slowly and scale badly, so they feel laggy to use2022-04-17
- JS and native crashes get mixed up, leaving stack traces hard to trace2021-11-12
- Upgrades and package management break often; Metro bundler errors are mind-boggling2021-11-11
- Apps built with it feel janky and laggy to use2021-09-26
- Bugs are nearly impossible to fix because the debugger uses a different JS engine than devices2021-05-15
- Upgrading to latest version keeps tangling in dependency hell; app won't build on M1 Mac2021-05-15
- Small teams' React Native apps slowly become laggy and less responsive over time2021-05-15
- Hard to make the UI snappy and crisp for performance-sensitive code2021-03-03
- Complicated features force dropping to native code, made confusing by abstraction layers2021-01-27
- Hours spent wrangling config; fragile, and the user can't reproduce it in new projects2020-10-11
- Out-of-the-box screen animations are difficult to work with, requiring workarounds for less experienced developers2020-09-28
- Apps feel janky and compromised, pushing users to get in and out quickly2020-06-23
- C++ API is painful to use through FFI bindings2020-05-13
- Updating old projects always breaks something that must be hunted down and fixed2020-05-13
- Achieving native look requires fine-tuning fonts or building custom adapters2020-05-13
- Users assume jobs finished when UI gives no feedback, then queued actions return unexpectedly2020-05-13
- Animations API is harder than CSS, needs lots of experience for complex effects2020-04-29
- Animation is much more tedious to implement than in UIKit or CSS2020-04-29
- Hot-reload takes 15-20 seconds after each save, slowing development2020-03-01
- UI components are poorly documented, making development harder2020-03-01