React Native 0.87 doesn’t add much. It removes things — old APIs like InteractionManager and SafeAreaView that have been deprecated for years, plus tighter restrictions on deep path imports that let developers reach into the framework’s internals in ways the core team never fully supported. Developers tracking the release are calling it the biggest cleanup in the framework’s recent history, and reading it as exactly what a shrinking API surface ahead of a 1.0 release looks like.
That matters because React Native 1.0 has been “on the horizon” for the best part of a year with no confirmed date, which has made version stability a genuine hesitation for teams choosing between it and Flutter, SwiftUI, or Kotlin Multiplatform. A framework that’s still actively removing and restructuring core APIs is a framework whose upgrade path can break your app between minor versions — a real cost when you’re maintaining a production cross-platform codebase rather than a demo. Cleanup releases like 0.87 are the unglamorous prerequisite to that stability, not a feature in themselves, but they’re the leading indicator worth watching if API churn has been the reason you’ve held off committing.
None of this changes what React Native is good at today — one JavaScript/TypeScript codebase shipping to iOS and Android with near-native performance for most business apps, backed by the largest community of any cross-platform framework. It does mean the “wait for it to stabilise” objection is getting harder to justify as the gap narrows.
So what
If cross-platform framework maturity has been a reason to delay a mobile build, React Native’s trajectory toward 1.0 is a signal worth revisiting rather than a reason to keep waiting — the alternative is usually a slower, costlier native-per-platform build for capability most business apps don’t need. We build across React Native, Flutter, and native iOS/Android depending on what the app actually requires; see our cross-platform and iOS & Android services or start a project if you’re weighing frameworks for a build.