--- title: Shopify ditches React Native, and AI is why it finally... description: Shopify is migrating its React Native codebase entirely to native Swift and Kotlin, and the company frames AI as the reason the move now makes sense. Michael... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/shopify-ditches-react-native-and-ai-is-why-it-finally-made-sense-njsh5afoy twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Shopify ditches React Native, and AI is why it finally made sense | daily.dev og:description: Shopify is migrating its React Native codebase entirely to native Swift and Kotlin, and the company frames AI as the reason the move now makes sense. Michael... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/shopify-ditches-react-native-and-ai-is-why-it-finally-made-sense-njsh5afoy og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/njsh5afOY.png og:image:alt: Shopify ditches React Native, and AI is why it finally made sense og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Shopify ditches React Native, and AI is why it finally made sense **[Trends](https://daily.dev/sources/trends)** · 2 min read · 8 upvotes · 3 comments ## Summary Shopify is migrating its React Native codebase entirely to native Swift and Kotlin, and the company frames AI as the reason the move now makes sense. Michael Jackson says AI made the rewrite lower risk, while Peter Steinberger argues duplicating logic across platforms is no longer painful, only maintaining abstraction layers is. iOS developer Sean Allen argues native apps are simply better and expects more companies to follow. The broader point: if AI compresses the cost of writing native code twice, the developer-economics case for React Native, Flutter, and similar cross-platform frameworks weakens. ## Content Shopify just announced it's ditching React Native for native Swift and Kotlin, reversing the 2020 decision that became one of the most-cited arguments *for* cross-platform development. The Shop app was rebuilt in 12 weeks using an internal agentic tool called Helix, which breaks migrations into per-screen chunks, runs visual comparisons, and routes output through adversarial review agents before any human sees it. The numbers Shopify is claiming: 23% faster iOS cold starts, 50% faster on Android, crash-free sessions at 99.95%. The stated reason is that AI coding agents collapsed the cost advantage of a shared codebase. If porting Swift to Kotlin is "a matter of one prompt and hours to days of waiting," as one developer put it, then the whole premise of cross-platform development shifts. Shopify's head of mobile Mustafa Ali made exactly this argument. The community is not fully buying it. Gergely Orosz called it directly: "Every few years one eng blog article gets everyone in mobile talking about it... This is THAT article of the decade. In 2018 it was Airbnb writing an article about the opposite." An Expo co-founder reportedly called the move more political than technical. Critics point out that Shopify never migrated to React Native's new architecture, never adopted Expo, and never mentioned over-the-air updates — arguably React Native's biggest practical advantage over app-store review gates. The benchmarks, in other words, are comparing Shopify's specific, arguably neglected React Native setup against a fresh native build. There's also the open-source fallout. Shopify is winding down its React Native libraries: Restyle is being archived, FlashList is looking for new stewardship, React Native Skia is being forked back to its original maintainer. For teams depending on those libraries, this is the more concrete problem. Ben Awad's read is probably the most honest: "As much as I love React Native, it feels like we are a couple model releases away from this being how everyone builds apps going forward." Peter Steinberger put it more bluntly: "Duplicating logic is no longer painful. Abstractions still are." The practical advice from people not caught up in the discourse: measure your actual app before following Shopify's lead. Their codebase, their constraints, their political dynamics. Yours are different. ## Questions this post answers ### Why is Shopify moving away from React Native to native Swift and Kotlin? Shopify is migrating its entire React Native codebase to native Swift and Kotlin because AI has made the rewrite easier and lower risk than before. Michael Jackson stated that AI handles the work of translating React Native components into native equivalents well enough that duplicating logic across platforms is no longer the costly, error-prone burden it used to be, removing a key argument for cross-platform frameworks. _Following how AI-assisted rewrites reshape build-vs-buy tradeoffs for mobile teams is easier with daily.dev._ ### What is the argument that AI is killing the business case for cross-platform frameworks like React Native and Flutter? The argument is that cross-platform frameworks exist mainly to avoid duplicating logic across iOS and Android, but AI now makes that duplication cheap and low-risk, as Peter Steinberger put it: 'duplicating logic is no longer painful, abstractions still are.' Since abstraction layers still leak and fight platform updates, once AI removes the duplication cost, the remaining case for frameworks like React Native or Flutter weakens. _Weighing native versus cross-platform tooling gets easier when daily.dev surfaces takes like this one._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 785 comments across lobsters, hackernews (as of 2026-09-16). **TL;DR:** Most commenters see the native-vs-cross-platform decision as a normal engineering tradeoff that shifts with resources and tools, agreeing AI coding assistants meaningfully lower the cost of maintaining separate native codebases, though some are skeptical the switch is purely technically motivated or worry about long-term maintenance drift. **Sentiment:** 25% positive · 45% mixed · 30% skeptical **The case for** - Several developers report first-hand success rapidly porting apps from React Native to native Swift/Kotlin overnight using AI coding agents, suggesting the approach is genuinely viable. - Native apps avoid the need to keep cross-platform library semantics aligned and can better match platform-specific UX conventions. - With robust test suites, LLMs make maintaining two native codebases much more tractable than before. **The pushback** - Some argue the real cost isn't extra engineers but the organizational overhead of keeping two platform codebases in sync, which AI doesn't necessarily solve. - Skeptics note the rewrite narrative is unproven until the new apps ship and users react, citing past big rewrites that went poorly. - A few see this as premature or overhyped, wanting actual performance benchmarks rather than AI-driven justification alone. - Others point out major AI companies themselves (ChatGPT desktop, Claude Code) still rely on Electron/React rather than fully native, undercutting the idea that AI has fully erased the cost gap. **By community** - lobsters (mixed): No comment content was provided, so sentiment can't be meaningfully assessed beyond the discussion existing. - hackernews (mixed): Discussion ranges from measured agreement that AI is shifting the native/cross-platform cost-benefit line to skepticism about whether this rewrite will hold up long-term, with a long tangent into general Electron/React Native quality debates. **Hottest debate:** Whether keeping native iOS and Android apps in feature/UX parity is actually more organizationally costly than the cross-platform alternative, or a non-issue since platforms shouldn't be identical anyway. **Open questions** - Will the rewritten native apps actually perform better and satisfy users once fully rolled out, or will the rewrite run into the same pitfalls as past major app rewrites? - Why do heavily AI-resourced companies like Anthropic and OpenAI still ship Electron/React-based apps instead of native if the cost calculus has truly changed? - How will Shopify keep iOS and Android native codebases in sync long-term without the shared-code safety net React Native provided? **Highlights** > If you put every company that needs/has an app on a spectrum, there is a line somewhere that roughly divides them into two groups: where Electron/React Native/etc. makes sense or not. It's just a normal engineering decision: solving problems given limited resources. Companies have different problems and different resources. I think people in the tech community have probably also noticed that it's rather popular to have an absolute opinion on the goodness or badness of these tools. There's some magical thinking borne from ignorance that everyone just ought to go native or that React Native is the best thing ever to be used everywhere or that AI makes this line disappear entirely. I think these takes serve little value and distract from what’s interesting, and what the subtitle to this article says: that this line is moving due to AI. And I think that’s probably right. > — [Waterluvian on hackernews · 8 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644476) > We did the same thing - had 90% of it overnight. Then spent a few days in the background tweaking for polish. Our app is smaller, and has about 15-20 screens. I started at about 12:30am by giving codex a goal and it inventoried every screen based on the react native code, then created android and iOS directories, used maestro (I had already set up this tooling for a previous personal app build a few weeks prior), and had the whole thing working in android and iOS in the morning. Took it about 6 hours while I slept. The app is way smaller, launches instantly, and the android app is (supposedly) native looking. I say supposedly because I don't use android phones. But it's using Jetpack Compose and Kotlin. And I don't know Swift or Kotlin. I honestly don't see the point of React Native anymore. I know Expo is doing very cool agentic stuff, but I'm just not sure why I'd need any of it when I can write a native app. > — [atonse on hackernews · 9 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644503) > The main cost of two engineering teams shipping identical products in my opinion isn't the cost of those extra engineers, it is in the product and organizational challenges of keeping those two products that need to be identical in sync. I am very bullish on coding agents but would be wary of this turning into a mess. > — [nfw2 on hackernews · 6 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49646722) > Yet, neither ChatGPT desktop app nor Claude Code CLI is native. Mind you these are made by companies with practically infinite tokens. > — [raincole on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49645465) > its sad that the only reason warranting this switch is AI. I would have loved to see some performance benchmarks on some critical app flow. > — [prisonguard on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649618) **Source threads** - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/l3enhd/native_is_now_future_mobile_at_shopify) · 7 points · 3 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49643982) · 501 points · 782 comments ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@ristotoldsep** · 3 upvotes > AI making duplicate native code cheaper is wild. Abstractions finally have competition, and it’s copy-paste with a GPU. **@rappayne** · 1 upvotes > If anyone is entrenched into the Flutter community, I am. This literally hurts to read but I can't poke holes in any of it. They're correct. > > RIP Flutter. **@giorgishalvashvili** · 0 upvotes > its unclear article. With AI cross platform should be just as much cheaper as native and with a lot less tokens --- Tags: [#swift](https://daily.dev/tags/swift), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#react-native](https://daily.dev/tags/react-native), [#kotlin](https://daily.dev/tags/kotlin) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/shopify-ditches-react-native-and-ai-is-why-it-finally-made-sense-njsh5afoy) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Shopify ditches React Native, and AI is why it finally made sense","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/shopify-ditches-react-native-and-ai-is-why-it-finally-made-sense-njsh5afoy","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/shopify-ditches-react-native-and-ai-is-why-it-finally-made-sense-njsh5afoy"},"datePublished":"2026-09-10T16:42:51.799Z","dateModified":"2026-09-16T14:13:38.357Z","description":"Shopify is migrating its React Native codebase entirely to native Swift and Kotlin, and the company frames AI as the reason the move now makes sense. Michael...","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Trends","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Trends","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--ZfSp3asX--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996004/logos/trends?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/trends"},"commentCount":3,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/shopify-ditches-react-native-and-ai-is-why-it-finally-made-sense-njsh5afoy","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":8},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":3}],"keywords":"swift,ai-coding,react-native,kotlin","timeRequired":"PT2M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Trends","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/trends"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Shopify ditches React Native, and AI is why it finally made sense"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/shopify-ditches-react-native-and-ai-is-why-it-finally-made-sense-njsh5afoy","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"AI making duplicate native code cheaper is wild. Abstractions finally have competition, and it’s copy-paste with a GPU.","datePublished":"2026-09-11T09:03:51.595Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/njsh5afOY#c-iKP3bpJ0r","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Risto Tõldsep","url":"https://daily.dev/ristotoldsep","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocLDWc6mZn0JwNmXXw6WY0L_HJ6pegzRttooC5VgtXESHSj3MNYx=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"If anyone is entrenched into the Flutter community, I am. This literally hurts to read but I can’t poke holes in any of it. They’re correct.\nRIP Flutter.","datePublished":"2026-09-11T13:27:57.828Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/njsh5afOY#c-dMQHUoztK","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Rap Payne","url":"https://daily.dev/rappayne","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/1122906?v=4"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"its unclear article. With AI cross platform should be just as much cheaper as native and with a lot less tokens","datePublished":"2026-09-14T07:08:33.280Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/njsh5afOY#c-lKAJ2IMYu","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Giorgi Shalvashvili","url":"https://daily.dev/giorgishalvashvili","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocIwuIzmwaSYq8PEmOWByDg7J5ZxDHoG2lH-05--GDMIH4LQQ1tM=s96-c"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/shopify-ditches-react-native-and-ai-is-why-it-finally-made-sense-njsh5afoy#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why is Shopify moving away from React Native to native Swift and Kotlin?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Shopify is migrating its entire React Native codebase to native Swift and Kotlin because AI has made the rewrite easier and lower risk than before. Michael Jackson stated that AI handles the work of translating React Native components into native equivalents well enough that duplicating logic across platforms is no longer the costly, error-prone burden it used to be, removing a key argument for cross-platform frameworks. Following how AI-assisted rewrites reshape build-vs-buy tradeoffs for mobile teams is easier with daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What is the argument that AI is killing the business case for cross-platform frameworks like React Native and Flutter?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"The argument is that cross-platform frameworks exist mainly to avoid duplicating logic across iOS and Android, but AI now makes that duplication cheap and low-risk, as Peter Steinberger put it: 'duplicating logic is no longer painful, abstractions still are.' Since abstraction layers still leak and fight platform updates, once AI removes the duplication cost, the remaining case for frameworks like React Native or Flutter weakens. Weighing native versus cross-platform tooling gets easier when daily.dev surfaces takes like this one."}}]} ```