December 2024 Summaries

Expo is a prominent framework for React Native development, offering a comprehensive set of tools that simplify the process of building, testing, and deploying mobile applications. It caters to developers at various stages of their React Native journey, from those curious about the framework to seasoned experts. Expo enhances React Native’s capabilities by providing a modular approach to access native APIs and facilitates web-readiness by supporting universal apps for Android, iOS, and web platforms. Its Continuous Native Generation (CNG) feature streamlines project maintenance by generating native folders on demand, reducing the complexity of version upgrades. Expo’s Application Services (EAS) further augment its open-source tools by providing cloud-based solutions for building, submitting, and updating apps, allowing developers to focus on writing JavaScript code and iterating quickly without the burden of maintaining their own infrastructure. With EAS, developers can achieve faster build times, seamless CI/CD integration, and the ability to implement updates without requiring new builds, thus optimizing development velocity and efficiency.

Expo's 2024 achievements focused on enhancing the tools available for developers to build applications, with significant updates to their SDKs, including the major release of SDK 52, which made React Native's New Architecture the default for new projects. Collaborating closely with Meta, Expo is now the recommended framework for building React Native apps due to its comprehensive suite of APIs and tools. The introduction of Expo Router versions 3 and 4 streamlined app navigation with features like API Routes, bundle splitting, and enhanced tree shaking. To facilitate easier migration from React to React Native, Expo released DOM Components, integrating React DOM elements into Expo apps. Additionally, Expo introduced @expo/fingerprint for managing native build updates, and tools like Atlas and new DevTools to optimize web development processes and bundle outputs. The launch of expo.new aimed to simplify project initialization, while new workflow features like custom build jobs and automatic GitHub app updates streamlined development. Expo also improved security with environment variables, security activity tracking, and audit logs for Enterprise users. Looking ahead to 2025, Expo plans to enhance EAS Workflows and explore ways to integrate website and API function support, continuing its mission to create the best tools for writing application code.

Marathon is a social platform designed for TV enthusiasts, offering features such as tracking shows, following friends' viewing habits, and engaging in community discussions without the risk of spoilers. It allows users to organize their shows by status and track rewatches, while also functioning as a community space where users can share and discuss episodes. To enhance user engagement and organic growth, Marathon has implemented strategies for easy social sharing, including creating shareable URLs and generating custom share images using React Native libraries like react-native-view-shot. The platform's growth has been fueled by user recommendations and promotions, highlighting users as crucial marketing assets. Marathon also focuses on enabling users to share content on popular social media platforms like Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky with tailored share setups. Future improvements aim to enhance user experience with features like automatic share sheet activation upon taking screenshots and offering customizable share images, utilizing analytics to understand sharing behavior better. The development of Marathon has been supported by the React Native community, emphasizing the importance of open-source collaboration in building and enhancing the app.

Apple has announced updates to their Apple Push Notification service (APNs) server certificates, introducing a new trusted server certificate SHA-2 Root: USERTrust RSA Certification Authority certificate, with changes scheduled for the sandbox environment on January 20, 2025, and the production environment on February 24, 2025. Expo Push Service users are assured that no action is necessary on their part, as Expo's trust store already includes the new root certificate, ensuring seamless compatibility with the update. Users are encouraged to contact Expo via Discord for any inquiries.

Expo has developed the Expo Modules API, aiming to simplify native code integrations for app and library developers, and has rewritten its entire SDK to utilize this new API for improved maintenance and efficiency. This has facilitated faster package creation, bug fixes, and platform updates, while encouraging community contributions. A notable feature within this API is Shared Objects, which allows a seamless connection between native and JavaScript objects, enhancing performance by reducing memory and disk usage. This innovation simplifies API usage and optimizes image manipulation by maintaining native state within JavaScript contexts. Additionally, the concept of Shared Refs enables the integration of platform-provided types like UIImage on iOS and Bitmap on Android, avoiding dependency issues and reducing interface complexity across packages. These developments are already being implemented in new SDK packages like expo-video and expo-audio, promoting cross-compatibility and a more efficient React Native development experience.

Expo-video introduces a comprehensive solution for integrating video capabilities into Android, iOS, web, and TV applications through a user-friendly API that leverages the new SharedObject API. Replacing the outdated Video component of expo-av, expo-video offers enhanced features such as object-oriented API design, improved event handling, Picture-in-Picture support, DRM compatibility, and advanced subtitle management. The VideoPlayer, now separated from the VideoView, holds a direct reference to native player instances, allowing dynamic control over player properties and memory usage without altering the React state. Additionally, expo-video supports Now Playing notifications and closed captions, with future updates promising ad support, offline caching, and more advanced DRM settings. The development of expo-video was greatly supported by contributions from the Expo community, ensuring a stable and feature-rich experience for developers.