Shopify drops React Native for native development, citing AI coding agents

In a September 10 engineering post, Shopify announced it is moving its mobile apps from React Native back to native Swift and Kotlin, saying AI coding agents have dramatically lowered the cost of building for two platforms separately.

Shopify went all-in on React Native in 2020 and as recently as January 2025 publicly committed to keep investing in it. The reversal rests on a specific mechanism: agents can implement an Android feature using the iOS version as a reference, and handle translation, testing and review, so building the same feature twice no longer means twice the work. The company says prototypes rebuilding core parts of its biggest apps worked better than expected.

The migration is a full rebuild rather than a gradual port, covering the Shopify, Shop, Point of Sale and Inbox apps. On the ecosystem side, React Native Skia will be forked and carried on by maintainer William Candillon, FlashList — downloaded roughly 2 million times a week — is seeking a new long-term steward, and Restyle will be maintained until the end of 2026, then archived.

Caveat: the migration is not finished, and the cost and benefit figures are Shopify's own. Per Pragmatic Engineer's same-day write-up, the Shop app was rebuilt natively in just 12 weeks, but that detail comes from a paywalled third-party account.