Why we chose native Swift over React Native for our latest app
A deep dive into our architecture choices and why performance ultimately won out.
When we started building Focus Tracker AI, we had a choice to make: go cross-platform immediately with React Native, or build fully native experiences using Swift and Kotlin.
We realized that for an app that heavily relies on background processing and CoreML processing on device, the bridge overhead in cross-platform frameworks was noticeable. We needed to guarantee smooth 120hz scrolling while maintaining heavy background compute.
Our choice was SwiftUI. The declarative syntax allowed our frontend team to adapt quickly, and the performance benefits were undeniable. We've compiled our learnings into this article to help other indie developers make similar architecture decisions.