Top 10 React Native Developer Tools to Develop Powerful Mobile App in 2024

Today, we have hundreds of frameworks and libraries to develop mobile applications. Developers have options to choose any framework which perfectly suits the requirement and develop the high-quality application.

React Native is currently trending as a cross-platform mobile app development framework. A developer can create hybrid mobile apps that provide native-like feel.

The other reason for React Native’s growing popularity is the bulk of developer tools including testing tools and IDEs.

In this article, we are doing something different. Instead of emphasizing on a particular tool, we have included the top IDE tools, developer tools, and testing tools together that will help you make customized applications. Besides, having a large number of tools create perplex situation whether which one to choose from. So, this article will also help those developers to get the best idea about the tools.

Best IDE Tools For React Native

Hundreds of tools out there in the tech industry and every tool are important. Choosing one randomly cannot be the best idea. Therefore, we have selected some top-performing Text Editor tools for you to choose from. Importantly, a tool can work as a developer tool, testing tool, and editing tool. So, do not get surprised if you come out of any in this article.

1. Sublime Text

Sublime text is the best text editor that comes equipped with plenty of plugins developed by the community. It supports various programming languages and famous for code, markup, and prose. Developers get many functionalities that help them create a mind-blowing mobile application for cross-platform. Sublime is source code editor with a python API that It supports plenty of programming languages and markup languages.

Check out these features to understand Sublime Text in detail;

• “Goto Anything” allows quick navigation to symbol, line, or files
• “Command Palette” allows developers to launch quick keyboard invocation
• supports simultaneous editing
• supports many languages

2. Vim Editor

When you develop an application on React Native framework, Vim could be the best option for IDE or text editor. The tool is famous among developers for its highly configurable text editor that helps in changing text efficiently.

Let’s check the details of Vim Editor in points.

• Vim Editor is improved version of “vi text editor”
• It offers a complete feature set
• It works all kind editing
• Working on Vim is absolutely easy
• Vim can be configured simple Notepad-like to work
• Displays text in various forms so that error can be detected easily

3. Nuclide

A Nuclide is the most customized IDE that helps developers to improve the code. Most importantly, it also provides many features such as working sets, context view, health statistics, quick open, a task runner, a debugger, remote development, etc. to make an application highly scalable and robust.

Let’s glance through the top features of Nuclide;

• “Code diagnostics” to develop JavaScript
• Generate error detail when written code fails
• Allow developers to create Hack projects

Popular React Native Developer Tools

Developers Tool is all about helping the developer to create customized React Native Mobile App Development and helping developers with more features and functionality. A developer tool can carry out multiple tasks such as a text editor, testing and debugging tool.

4. Vasern

Vasern is new yet most powerful data storage for React Native. It enhances the storage capacity of React Native. Vasern is currently in alpha version and supports the framework (React Native) on iOS. It is lightweight and open source data storage can set up a local database just in 5 minutes.

There are some feature which you may find useful;

• It creates a local database just in 5 minutes
• It is still under development
• Its Alpha version is working effectively
• Native engine to provide native performance

5. Atom

Developed by GitHub, Atom is a cross-platform editing tool. The text editor efficiently works on different platforms including Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, etc. Apart from editing, it comes enabled with the built-in package manager, pretty themes, designs, smart autocompletion, cross-platform editing and much more.

What about its features? Let’s take a look;

• provides cross-platform editing
• Smart Auto Completion
• Multiple panes to split interface into multiple panes
• Ease of browsing and opening single, multiple and whole project file

6. Expo

Expo is an open source tool-chain that offers developers to create an application for iOS and Android on React Native framework. The Company Expo developed the developer tool- Expo that offers a range of services including fine documentation, development tools, slack community, and community forums.

Let’s glance through some of top features and services;

• Works on Serve, share, build and publish principle
• Access cross-platform device APIs
• Accelerometer to respond to the changes
• Single codebase runs across multiple platforms
• Publish updates on real-time

7. Reactotron

Reactotron is developed by Infinite Red and available for free to download. It is cross-platform desktop application works with Windows, Mac, and Linux. The tool is used with React Native App development as it provides real tracking feature. React Native Developers can keep a watch on application states, dispatch actions and much more.

Here’re some top features of Reactotron;

• Real-time event tracking
• Dispatch action
• Image overlay

Best Testing Tools for React Native

The testing tool allows a developer to make a mobile application bugs-free that perform well. There are many testing tools available which you can choose as per your comfort. We have tried to put the most favored tool here that will help you make testing absolutely easy and flawless. Some testing tools even help detect real-time bugs during the development process. Let’s check them out.

8. Jest

Jest, built by Facebook, a JS testing framework that works with React Native. It functions for unit testing with React Native application by default. It not suitable for perfect test coverage, though it is under improvement process and so you can get the most out of it.

Find out more about the testing tool through the features given below;

• “Zero Configuration” make JS testing solution easy
• Built-in code coverage reports without additional libraries support
• Snapshot testing to simplify the testing process

9. Detox

Detox is the best testing tool for React Native application and it provides end-to-end testing mobile apps. The testing tool is built and developed by Wix is seen as an alternative to Appium. The framework works cross-platform and supports React Native project as well as native projects such as iOS and Android.

Find out its top features here;

• Supports “unit test” for smaller modular pieces of code
• “Integration test” for a group test
• “Regression test” to retest the code that is already tested yet perform the same as before the changes

10. Calabash

Calabash is yet another tool/framework for a testing application built on React Native framework. The test is written in Cucumber that makes the test process quite easy. It supports hybrid as well as native mobile apps. Calabash is an open source and available for free.

Let’s check out its features and services;

• Supports entire app testing
• Automate testing for mobile app

Conclusion

React Native is the best framework for developing native-like mobile applications. There are other frameworks as well in the tech arena, but they are not so helpful or new in the industry. For an instance, Google’s Flutter is the recently released framework that helps developers create a cross-platform mobile application. But, reliability is the issue as it is new in the industry. It is expected that Flutter is going to give tough competition to the React Native, and the developers community is much talking about React Native VS. Flutter the later is performing well and even developer like work with React Native framework more than other frameworks. At the same time, there are hundreds of tools that support React Native. The feature-rich framework provides everything that the developer required to make an appealing application.