Top Challenges & Solutions to Optimize the Performance of React Native App

React Native provides an efficient way for developers to build cross-platform mobile apps. It is probably the closest thing you can build to a native mobile app in terms of performance. Developed by Meta Platforms, React Native is a Javascript-based framework that uses a native rendering engine to create native-like mobile apps. 

Despite the many advantages, it is a rapidly-evolving technology and has poor documentation. Needless to say, it lacks in performance when compared to the native apps. This performance can further deteriorate if you don’t follow suitable development practices. 

Understandably, the pressure is sky-high when you hire react native app developers. Therefore, this blog talks about the challenges React Native developers often face during development and ways to overcome them. 

Here, check out! 

React Native App Development Challenges & Solutions 

These are some of the commonly faced challenges one has to face in React native app development. 

Challenge 1: Increased app size causing performance issues 

One of the frequently faced challenges of React native programmers is when they are developing applications while depending on third-party tools and resources. They may need third-party libraries, numerous screens, etc. for development. 

While these can help extend the app’s functionality, they often increase the size of mobile apps, which has a direct effect on your app’s performance. 

Solution – 

• Use the Proguard command line tool to reduce the app size. 
• One can try reducing or compressing the graphic visual elements like images, animation, videos, etc. If you have any PNG files, change them to other formats like APNG, JPG, JPEG, or more. 
• It is best to convert the JSON data to static objects and not store it in its raw form. 
• Native libraries can be optimized to reduce the app size. 
• React native application developers can ensure there’s no need for JSCore binaries if you create APK files for certain CPU architectures in minimized size. 

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Challenge 2: Memory leak in Android list view 

Memory leaks are a common problem that happens when your application fails to release the previously allocated memory. It can be a cause of poor performance. Such memory leaks can happen when you are trying to use a bridge for passing information between native and React Native or JS parts. It takes a lot of time and your app can lag. 

This problem especially happens when working with listview. For instance, you have created a music app and the users search for a particular song in the list view. They have scrolled up to the third page and your app starts to lag. These are some common problems of memory leak with Android list view. 

Solution – 

• Develop pull to refresh feature. 
• Code for infinite scroll pagination. 
• Smooth rendering performance is a necessity. 

Challenge 3: Delay updating Android UI 

Since React Native overburdens the Javascript thread with a lot of responsibilities, there are increased chances of trouble when this thread isn’t available or free. If it is busy with complex functions and heavy loading tasks, the various UI components take time to load. 

The user’s app interface takes longer to load and one may face issues with loading navigation and animations. 

Solution – 

• Moving animation to the primary thread can help solve the problem. The React Native team is working on it and this should be addressed soon. Further, React Native developers should try and keep the JS  thread free to ensure every element loads as it should. 

Challenge 4: Android image caching issues 

Image caching is the technique wherein the image is downloaded and fetched locally from the cache directory itself. Now, there may appear certain issues with Android image caching if it hasn’t been coded appropriately. 

While developers can still fix this problem using npm libraries as they store images in a file system or implement image caching logic, they often seem to encounter problems like – 

• Performance problems – When the caching logic executes on the JS thread, you may encounter performance issues and lag. 
• Cache miss – Libraries may fail to retrieve the images loaded previously whenever the page is refreshed. 

Developers can utilize the react native cached image package or implement a placeholder based caching to avoid these issues. 

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Challenge 5: Slow navigator transitions 

As we already know, navigator animations run on javascript threads. However, too many functions running on the JS thread can make the application sluggish. It typically happens when the React Native framework is attempting to render a fresh screen at the same time as running animation in the JS thread. 

Solution – 

One can utilize the interaction manager to ensure the mobile application’s performance improves. If this doesn’t solve the problem, choosing layout animation is a better option.  

These are some commonly faced challenges for businesses and developers who use React Native for app development. However, with optimized development practices, such issues can be resolved. 

One can also hire dedicated React Native developers to ensure their app performance is optimized. Besides, such developers have the skills and experience to overcome the challenges and find innovative ways to improve development methods. React Native also has a huge community of contributors whom they can turn to for seeking instant resolutions. 

Summary:

Developing robust applications with React Native needs good development practices and skilled resources. Even so, they may face several challenges that need to be addressed for optimized app performance. Here, we will talk about such challenges and ways to overcome them.