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React Native 0.86 - Edge-to-Edge and DevTools Improvements, no breaking changes

· 7 min read
Fabrizio Cucci
Fabrizio Cucci
Software Engineer @ Meta
Rob Hogan
Rob Hogan
Software Engineer @ Meta
Mathieu Acthernoene
Mathieu Acthernoene
Software Engineer @ Expo
Gabriel Donadel Dall'Agnol
Gabriel Donadel Dall'Agnol
Software Engineer @ Expo

Today we are excited to release React Native 0.86!

This release includes comprehensive edge-to-edge support on Android 15+ and improvements in React Native DevTools.

Following 0.83, this is the second React Native release with no user-facing breaking changes, reflecting our continued commitment to making upgrades more predictable and seamless.

A New Home for React Native​

As part of this release, the React, React Native, Metro, Yoga and React Native Website repositories are moving from the facebook GitHub organization to the react organization. This move reflects the transition of React and React Native to the React Foundation, an independent foundation dedicated to the long-term stewardship of the React ecosystem.

GitHub will automatically redirect all existing URLs, issues and PRs to the new location, so no action is required on your part.

Highlights​

Highlights​

Edge-to-Edge on Android​

React Native 0.86 ships comprehensive fixes for Android 15+ edge-to-edge mode, including when it's enforced by the OS but not explicitly enabled via the edgeToEdgeEnabled Gradle property.

Key fixes include:

  • measureInWindow now returns correct coordinates when edge-to-edge is enabled.
  • KeyboardAvoidingView works correctly on Android 15+ with edgeToEdgeEnabled.
  • Dimensions window values are accurate on Android versions prior to 15 when edge-to-edge is enabled.
  • StatusBar now supports updating status bar style and visibility while a Modal is open.
  • Navigation bar contrast respects the theme's enforceNavigationBarContrast attribute.

React Native DevTools Improvements​

React Native DevTools now support light/dark mode emulation via Emulation.setEmulatedMedia, allowing you to test your app's appearance mode handling directly from the DevTools without changing your device settings.

Breaking Changes​

React Native 0.86 has no user-facing breaking changes.

If you are on React Native 0.85, you should be able to upgrade your app to React Native 0.86 without any changes to your app code.

To learn more about what we consider a breaking change, have a look at this article.

Deprecations​

The following APIs have been deprecated and are due for removal in a future release of React Native:

  • ViewUtil.getUIManagerType: As part of the removal of the legacy architecture, this API is now deprecated. You can inline UIManagerType.Fabric directly or remove the checks on the UIManagerType altogether.
  • AppRegistry: The second argument of AppRegistry.setComponentProviderInstrumentationHook is now deprecated and will warn if used.

Other Changes​

Runtime & Web Spec Alignment​

  • ExceptionsManager.reportErrorsAsExceptions strictness: Setting reportErrorsAsExceptions to anything other than false no longer does anything. Previously, any falsy value (like 0, null, or "") would disable error-to-exception conversion. Now only the explicit boolean false opts out, making the API less error-prone.
  • PerformanceObserver default durationThreshold: observe({type: 'event'}) now correctly defaults durationThreshold to 104ms per the W3C Event Timing spec, instead of reporting all events. This aligns React Native's Performance API with web standards and reduces noise from very short events.

Rendering, Layout & Animation​

  • Modal Components style prop: The style prop is now forwarded to Modal's inner container View, allowing custom styling (e.g., padding, background colors) without overriding transparent or backdropColor behavior.
  • Animated mounting layer sync: Enabled a mounting layer synchronization so Native Animated synchronous updates are not overridden by later React commits. This fixes a flicker where animated views could briefly jump back to their pre-animation values.
  • Text measurement crash: Fixed a crash when measuring text on a surface that had already been stopped.
  • Non-invertible transform touch fix: Views with non-invertible transforms (e.g., scaleX: 0 or scaleY: 0) no longer receive touches on Android or iOS. Hit-testing now detects when a transform matrix can't be inverted and skips those views.
  • Yoga Layout fixes: Fixed several layout regressions related to Yoga such as text wrapping in absolutely positioned elements on Android (#56651), a crash with Android's BoringLayout.isBoring() with a negative width (#56007) and fixed ownership of nodes with display: contents nodes (#56422).

Accessibility​

  • Unresolved promises: Fixed AccessibilityInfo.isDarkerSystemColorsEnabled, isHighTextContrastEnabled and prefersCrossFadeTransitions returning promises that never resolved on unsupported platforms. They now resolve to false instead of hanging indefinitely.

Infrastructure & Dependencies​

  • Metro ^0.84.2: Updated Metro bundler dependency.
  • HeadlessJsTaskSupportModule auto-registration: This module is now registered in the CoreReactPackage, so apps that use headless JS tasks on Android no longer need to ensure this module is manually registered.

JSI (Native Interface)​

New JSI APIs added to make the C++ interface between native modules and the JS engine more capable:

  • IRuntime interface: Makes previously protected Runtime methods public, enabling new JSI functionality without cascading interface versions.
  • TypedArray / Uint8Array: First-class support for typed arrays, including creation, buffer access, offset and length queries.
  • ArrayBuffer.detached: Check whether an ArrayBuffer has been detached.
  • Array.push: Append elements to arrays (previously array size was immutable after creation).
  • String.length: Get string length in UTF-16 code units without converting to a full string.
  • isInteger: Check if a jsi::Value is an integer without calling into the runtime.
  • Error creation APIs: Factory methods for all standard JS error types (TypeError, RangeError, ReferenceError, SyntaxError, EvalError, URIError).

Android Input & Navigation​

  • BackHandler event object: hardwareBackPress events now pass an event object with a timeStamp property from the native event, enabling timing analysis and event correlation. Existing callbacks that ignore the argument are unaffected.
  • BackHandler resume fix on API 36+: BackHandler callbacks stopped working after the app was resumed from the background on Android API 36+. The fix ensures the back button handler is properly re-registered during onHostResume.
  • LogBox/RedBox back button dismiss: LogBox notification toasts and the inspector overlay can now be dismissed via the Android hardware back button.
  • TextInput setAutoCapitalize Samsung fix: Fixed setAutoCapitalize stripping TYPE_NUMBER_FLAG_SIGNED and TYPE_NUMBER_FLAG_DECIMAL flags on Samsung keyboards, which prevented users from typing minus signs in numeric inputs.
  • TextInput/KeyboardAvoidingView IME height: KeyboardAvoidingView and TextInput auto-scroll now respond correctly to IME height changes, such as toggling between the keyboard and emoji panel or when the predictive text bar appears.

Android Networking​

  • OutOfMemoryError handling: NetworkingModule now correctly handles very large HTTP responses and will not OOM or crash.
  • WebSocket Cookie header: WebSocketModule no longer strips a Cookie header passed via the WebSocket constructor's headers option, allowing authentication cookies to be sent over WebSocket connections.
  • Blob content provider with New Architecture: The Blob content provider (used for blob: URLs to access binary data) now works correctly with the New Architecture.

Acknowledgements​

React Native 0.86 contains over 596 commits from 97 contributors. Thanks for all your hard work!

We want to send a special thank you to those community members that shipped significant contributions in this release.

Upgrade to 0.86​

info

0.86 is now the latest stable version of React Native and 0.83.x moves to unsupported. For more information see React Native's support policy.

Upgrading​

Please use the React Native Upgrade Helper to view code changes between React Native versions for existing projects, in addition to the Upgrading docs.

Create a new project​

npx @react-native-community/cli@latest init MyProject --version latest

Expo​

For Expo projects, React Native 0.86 will be available as part of the expo@canary releases.