Introducing 🚨 (open-source) The fastest way to run React Native / Expo apps in the browser. Metro bundler mapped to the web with HMR, Expo Router, assets, source maps! Go and try it now!

Really nice! Could this be used as a preview tool for docs? That's one thing react native really struggles with is have live previews of components in docs. Basically if expo snack doesn't work then you have to use screenshots or recordings...

@_liamandr Yes! We can open up APIs

It bundles and runs completely on phones too! The intention is to give an environment to build mobile apps from anywhere. This would probably at some point merge with lifo (the linux-like sandbox that I built for the browser / node env).

Expo Snack has existed for years and we all love it! reactnative-run extends it with expo-router, hmr, assets, API routes, source map!

Star us on github, would help this project grow!

ooh this is very cool, nice work!

thanks Brent :)

Cool

I will definitely check this out

This is fantastic man, I have been looking for something like this for a long time. Thank you

that makes me feel good :)

Do the pages then simply render as Expo-web?

Yes! It is very close to expo's web rendering

hey dude cool stuff! could i make a $lifo fan token for you and redirect money to ur github for you to claim? it'll be a community crowd-funding you money to help support/fund your project and any costs you might have have to cover.

@kingslayer067 I have no idea how that works, appreciate it! Have a lot of dms on this idea

sure man check dms

Awesome stuff Sanket! Can I send a donation to the github? Think this is awesome bro!

@0xJuicy__ Appreciate it, we don't have github sponsors open yet!

you dont need to actually set that up! i can just send it directly to ur github thru a pf and u can claim it :) lmk!!

Damn, this is good Why not just make it so desktop app so react native devs can do away with android studio and maybe not use expo go

This is expo go like app in the browser. So nothing different than running expo cli but all that happens inside browser.

I know that, what I am mean is making it a desktop app would enable me to go away with expo go and to run and preview the app directly something I have been needing for a while now

What’s the cons of this. You build a RN app and then make it a web app. I guess it can be pretty awesome for the mobile view of a site. But are there any other benefits?

People have been using React Native on the web for years, Uber was among the early adopters. Expo web is widely adopted too! reactnative-run is slightly different, it runs the dev env of expo apps in the browser, not just the built version!

Thank you, yeah I know, okay, so is this is for development only?

Yes!

Super cool, imo also a big upside here would be the ability to let agents test the apps and see what they’ve done. Not so easy with simulators

Yes, so many opportunities unlock here!

This is crazy where can I access?

on the link

Does this mean we could have a vscode web extension that runs the metro server? The usecase would be just opening any repo with

vscode web doesn't run npm dev server in the browser, but theoretically it can do it with browser-metro (cord package of reactnative-run

core* package of reactnative-run

In a monorepo setup, we have platform-specific component files like Component.native.tsx and Component.web.tsx. When running the app using which file gets picked up ?

It's only for web currently! Picks up web.tsx over native ones!

This looks awesome. I’m a little confused though. Is it an IDE? A VS code extension? @swmansion this guy is coming for y’all and radon ;)

@swmansion It's an IDE in the browser! We love Radon! The native debugging of radon is unmatchable!

@swmansion Ok that’s what I was leaning towards as it looked like it was in the browser. Codex has started using Playwright MCP to open a browser on my computer to try to debug. Does it have agent access like that? I think Radon doesn’t support browsers. So I guess this is just for web dev?

the goal is to run react native / expo projects in the browser! we are currently using it with expo apps run in the browser from expo cli! so that can be used for playwright test. reactnative-run lets you run the full env in the browser without a cli or a host machine

@swmansion I’ll just have to check it out and report back :)