Shopify Goes Back to Native Mobile: AI Agents Changed the Math
Shopify is moving its mobile apps off React Native to fully native Swift and Kotlin, saying AI coding agents have made building for two platforms cheaper than one shared codebase.
What happened
Shopify is moving its mobile apps from React Native back to fully native code — Swift on iOS, Kotlin on Android — reversing the all-in bet it placed in 2020 and still defended in January 2025.
Why the math changed
Coding models. Shopify has used LLMs since 2021, and by late 2025 its agents could implement a feature on Android using the iOS version as a reference, help engineers work outside their main stack, and cut the cost of keeping two platforms in sync. Prototypes rebuilt in Swift and Kotlin showed that native no longer costs what it did in 2020.
What it means
React Native "remains an excellent framework," Shopify says. It will keep sponsoring React Native Skia through the end of 2026, after which creator William Candillon will publish the library under a new name. AI agents are now part of core architecture decisions.