Unified Animation Engine
React Native 0.85 introduces the Shared Animation Backend, a unified internal engine for both Animated and Reanimated. This change eliminates logic inconsistencies and significantly boosts cross-platform performance.
Native Layout Animations
For the first time, developers can use useNativeDriver to animate layout properties such as width, height, flex, and position. While currently experimental, this feature provides smoother transitions by offloading layout changes to the native thread.
Enhanced Developer Tools
- Multi-client Debugging: React Native DevTools now supports multiple simultaneous connections via the Chrome DevTools Protocol.
- Secure Development: Metro now supports TLS, enabling dev server testing via HTTPS and WSS.
- Slimmer Core: The Jest preset has been moved to a standalone package (
@react-native/jest-preset), and support for EOL Node.js versions has ended.
