How to Optimize Your React Native App Performance: A Complete Guide

Introduction

In the present day, a growing number of businesses and developers are choosing cross-platform app development due to its extensive array of benefits. One notable advantage pertains to the development process, where it is acknowledged for its ability to decrease both the cost and time required to construct the app. Conversely, from a business perspective, it has the potential to enhance reach and engagement.

One notable cross-platform solution that stands out is React Native, recognized as the forthcoming standard for cross-platform app development.

Also Read – 7 Common Mistakes in React Native Development

What is React Native and What are its Benefits?

React Native is a mobile app framework that utilizes JavaScript and allows the creation of native-like mobile applications for both iOS and Android. With this framework, you can build applications for multiple platforms using a unified codebase.

Originally initiated as an open-source venture by Facebook in 2015, React Native swiftly garnered recognition and emerged as a prominent choice for web development. Presently, React Native drives numerous renowned mobile applications worldwide, including Instagram, Facebook, Skype, and various others.

So, what are the reasons behind React Native’s immense popularity?

There are several reasons behind the immense popularity of React Native which include:

Code reusability

React Native allows developers to write code once and reuse it across multiple platforms. This significantly reduces development time and effort, as there’s no need to build separate apps for iOS and Android from scratch.

Native-like performance

React Native utilizes native components, resulting in a highly responsive and performant user interface. By leveraging the device’s GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), React Native achieves near-native performance, providing a smooth user experience.

Efficiency and productivity

React Native’s hot-reloading feature allows developers to instantly see the changes made to the code, eliminating the need for time-consuming recompiling and reloading. This enhances productivity and speeds up the development cycle.

Large community and ecosystem

React Native has a vast and active community of developers. This means there are abundant resources, libraries, and tools available to assist in development. The community also contributes to the growth of React Native, sharing knowledge and providing support.

Cost-effectiveness

By using React Native, businesses can save costs by having a single codebase that can be deployed on both iOS and Android platforms. This eliminates the need to maintain separate development teams and reduces overall development and maintenance expenses.

Also Read – Maximizing ROI with React Native App Development

JavaScript language

React Native uses JavaScript as its programming language, which is widely known and used by developers. This lowers the barrier to entry for developers to start building mobile apps and allows them to leverage their existing JavaScript skills.

Backed by Facebook

React Native is developed and maintained by Facebook, which provides reassurance to developers and businesses regarding its stability, ongoing support, and future updates.

React Native can be viewed as an all-inclusive solution for creating high-performing applications. However, there may be instances where you find it necessary to enhance the optimization of your app. In such scenarios, you have the option to hire a React Native app developer to improve the app’s performance or acquire knowledge and apply best practices on your own.

While React Native remains a top-notch app development technology, occasional performance issues can arise. Consequently, it becomes crucial to prioritize best practices and performance enhancements during the development of your React Native app.

Guidelines to Enhance Performance in a React Native Application

Here are some tips that you can use to improve React Native app performance:

Minimize the usage of Scroll View to Render Huge Lists

In React Native, there are typically two methods for presenting scrollable lists: utilizing the ScrollView component or the FlatList component. While using ScrollView to display a scrollable list may seem straightforward, it can negatively impact the overall mobile app performance, particularly when dealing with a substantial number of items. To address this concern, experts recommend opting for the FlatList instead of ScrollView for efficiently listing items.

Utilize Appropriate Navigation Strategies

Navigating React Native apps can be challenging for developers, impacting the overall user experience of the app. However, thanks to the efforts of the React Native developer community, many of these issues have been effectively addressed. Nevertheless, there remain certain unresolved problems that require further attention and solutions.

Luckily, there are multiple options accessible to address these issues, such as React Navigation, iOS Navigator, and Navigator & Navigation experiment, among others. Developers widely favor the React Navigation package for numerous applications, regardless of their scale. On the other hand, the iOS Navigator is exclusively employed for iOS navigation development, specifically suited for resolving navigation problems in small applications and prototype development.

Prefer Not to Pass Functions Inline as Props

To ensure optimal performance, it is advisable to refrain from passing functions inline as props in components. In situations where the parent component undergoes re-rendering, resulting in a new function reference, the child component may also re-render even when the props remain unchanged. Experts recommend declaring the function either as a class method or as a function within a functional component. By doing this, you eliminate the risk of generating new references during re-renders.

Cache images

In React Native, images play a crucial role as core components. However, the default image component lacks built-in solutions for addressing common issues encountered while rendering multiple images on a single screen, improving cache loading performance, enhancing overall app performance, mitigating image flickering, and more. Fortunately, there are multiple approaches to tackle these challenges, and one effective method is leveraging third-party libraries such as react-native-fast-image. This library serves as an excellent solution as it seamlessly caters to the needs of iOS and Android app development.

Optimize images

While caching can certainly assist in re-rendering, it remains essential to prioritize the smooth launch of your app by ensuring that images do not hinder its performance. Consequently, optimizing the images becomes crucial in improving React Native app performance.

When rendering a large number of images, it consumes a significant amount of memory. Nevertheless, you can address this issue by optimizing the resolution and size of the images according to your application’s requirements. Opting for formats such as PNG during app development can be advantageous, and you can also consider utilizing the WEBP format, which effectively reduces image size for both Android and iOS platforms.

Reduce irrelevant Renders

When it comes to preventing unnecessary renders on the main thread of React Native apps, there exists a highly effective optimization technique. You can achieve this effortlessly by leveraging React’s .memo() function, which enables efficient memorization. In essence, when a component receives an identical set of properties multiple times, it utilizes the cached properties and renders the JSX view returned by the functional component only once. This significantly reduces the overall rendering overhead, resulting in improved performance.

Enhance the React Native codes

To optimize rendering efficiency and save developer time and memory, React Native code is designed to prioritize performance. Therefore, it is advisable to enhance the code to ensure the delivery of well-suited applications. By utilizing PureComponent for text components, there is no need to override the code, thereby preventing any negative impact on performance.

To ensure proper functionality and achieve the best results in this scenario, it is essential to accurately define the functions and the code.

Avoid using arrow functions

The usage of arrow functions in React Native can result in unnecessary re-renders, leading to memory wastage. These callbacks trigger view rendering, generating new instances with each render. This adversely affects the app’s speed, agility, and overall performance.

Use Hermes

Hermes, an open-source JavaScript engine specifically designed for mobile applications, offers optimization benefits. It effectively reduces the APK’s download size, minimizes memory footprint and consumption, and speeds up the app’s interactivity. To enable Hermes on both iOS and Android platforms, it is recommended to contact a React Native mobile app development company.

Incorporate memory optimization

If you have observed numerous apps running in the background, particularly during app rendering or launch, it is essential to monitor these running apps. To accomplish this, Xcode can be utilized for iOS, and Android Device Monitor can be used for Android Studio. It is crucial to optimize the app’s code to identify memory leaks and enhance memory usage.

To achieve this, consider utilizing Flatlist for scrollable views. Additionally, SectionList and VirtualList can be employed. However, exercise caution and avoid including console logs in the production model.

Conclusion

By following these aforementioned React Native performance tips, you can enhance the speed of the app. However, if you are having problems in identifying appropriate coding methods or optimizing render views, our React Native experts at Bytes Technolab can help you with that. Our skilled team will use best practices to enhance React Native’s app performance.

You can get in touch with us today for expert guidance and support.