Building our community mobile app with React Native

For a long time, our answer to "is there an app?" was "the website works on your phone". Members were polite about it, but the requests kept coming. So this year we built one with React Native on top of our UNA backend.

One backend, two front ends

The app talks to the same API as the web app, so a feature built once ships to both. Spaces, events, messages and profiles all come from UNA, and the app mostly worries about making them pleasant to use on a small screen.

What members noticed first

• Push notifications for replies, so conversations don't stall while someone is away from their laptop.
• Much faster browsing of spaces on the go.
• A proper share button, which turned out to be how a lot of new members found us.

What was harder than expected

Notifications, mostly. Getting the balance right between useful and annoying took several rounds, and we're still tuning which updates deserve a push and which can wait for the daily digest.

Beta testers, thank you for every bug report, especially the ones that came with screenshots. If you'd like to join the next round of testing, say so in the comments.