Using react-native-mmkv to improve app performance

React Native developers often use AsyncStorage for key-value storage, but the react-native-mmkv library offers a compelling alternative due to its enhanced performance and security features. Unlike AsyncStorage, which requires asynchronous operations and manual data serialization, MMKV provides fully synchronous storage and supports multiple data types without serialization. This library, developed by WeChat, is cross-platform compatible and includes data encryption, making it more suitable for sensitive information. However, MMKV has limitations such as less extensive documentation and memory inefficiency for large data sets, as well as challenges in remote debugging due to its use of the JavaScript Interface. Despite these drawbacks, MMKV’s speed and security make it a strong contender for React Native applications, especially when storing small amounts of data. The article outlines the implementation process for MMKV, detailing how to store, retrieve, delete, and encrypt data, and how to subscribe to updates, while acknowledging the library’s smaller community compared to AsyncStorage.