Tips to improve the performance of React Native Apps

kamal damgwal
3 min readNov 5, 2019

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As per the report by Google, around 53% of visitors leave the website or the mobile app which takes more than 3 seconds to load. This clearly means that every second your app fails to load; you lose potential clients. Hence, in this article, we will discuss by focusing on improving the performance of react native apps and we will also discuss the problems that a website developer may face.

React Native App
React Native Mobile App

How react native applications work?

The react native uses JavaScript and communicates with the native components with the help of a bridge. The react native depends on major 3 primary threads:

React Native Mobile App
React Native Mobile App Development

The major part of the react native app consists of: native part which runs on objective-C, java or Swift; react-native that is built by using JavaScript.

Tips to improve the performance of React native app

While looking at the react-native Github page, you might be able to see that the developers are reporting on lots of issues and errors. These issues are either implementational or inherent. Let us look at the major tips to improve the performance of react-native to its problems as well as solutions below:

1. Memory issue

The problem

Memory leaks are one of the major problems for android apps that are built on react native due to many unnecessary background processes. You can also find the leaks by using XCode as:

· Navigate to XCode > Product > Profile

· Choose Leaks

You can find memory leaks using Android Studio as follows:

· Start your React Native app normally

· Run Android Studio

· Navigate to Tools > Android > Enable ADB Integration

· Click on Tools > Android > Android Device Monitor

· After the Android Device Monitor starts, click on Monitor > Preferences

· Use Perf Monitor to identify any memory leaks

The solution

The best way to solve the memory leak problem in react native application is by utilizing the scrolling list like section list, a flat list, etc instead of the listview.

2. Image size problem

The problem

Image contributes immensely to high memory usage to react native mobile apps. Therefore, no wonder, image optimization is critical in improving app performance.

The solution

To solve the high memory usage problem caused by images you should:

· Reduce the size of your images

· Convert your images to WebP format

· Use PNG rather than JPEG image format

· Local image caching

3. Unnecessary Renders

React Native Mobile app developers
React Native App

The Problem

You need to very careful while implementing the diff state, lifecycle and props. This helps to prevent you from passing too much work to the reconciler, which may result in the dropping of the thread’s FPS.

The solution

Use the “should-component update” lifecycle method as the Boolean. This might help you to determine whether the component should update. Also, in addition to all this, you should prefer creating a small number of components.

Conclusion

React native presents an amazing opportunity for both mobile app development companies and developers. This makes it quite possible to write an application for android as well as iOS using one language: JavaScript.

For more details regarding react native mobile app development company, you can directly reach us out at Brainmobi.com.

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