🚀 React Native 0.85 Is Here — And It Changes How Animations Work Forever

The React Native team just dropped version 0.85, and this one is worth paying attention to. Whether you're building cross-platform apps with Expo or vanilla React Native, here's what you need to know.

🎞️ The Biggest Deal: A New Animation Backend

For years, one of React Native's most frustrating limitations was that the native driver couldn't animate layout props like width, height, or flexbox values. That limitation is now officially gone.

React Native 0.85 introduces the Shared Animation Backend — a new internal engine built in collaboration with Software Mansion (the team behind Reanimated). The key idea: animation update logic now lives in React Native core, which means both Animated and Reanimated share the same foundation.

What does this mean in practice?

• You can now animate width, height, padding, flex, and other layout props using useNativeDriver: true
• Reanimated gains performance improvements that weren't previously possible
• The reconciliation process is properly tested and stable across future RN updates

This is a significant unlock for developers who previously had to work around this with workarounds or third-party solutions.

(Note: This feature ships experimentally in 0.85.1, opt-in via the experimental channel)

🛠️ React Native DevTools Gets Smarter

Three meaningful improvements landed in DevTools this release:

Multiple CDP connections — React Native now supports multiple simultaneous Chrome DevTools Protocol connections. This means React Native DevTools, VS Code, and even AI agents can all connect at the same time without kicking each other out. This is a huge quality-of-life improvement for complex debugging workflows.

Native tabs on macOS — The DevTools desktop app now targets macOS 26 and supports system-level window tab merging. Power users will appreciate this.

Network panel fix — Request body previews in the Network Panel are restored on Android after a regression had disabled them.

🔒 Metro Now Supports TLS

The Metro dev server can now accept TLS configuration, enabling HTTPS and WSS (for Fast Refresh) during local development. This is particularly useful when your app interacts with APIs that enforce secure connections, or when testing production-like environments locally.

Setup is straightforward via metro.config.js, and the team recommends mkcert for generating locally-trusted certificates without browser warnings.

⚠️ Breaking Changes to Know About

Jest Preset → New Package The Jest preset has been extracted from react-native into @react-native/jest-preset. It's a one-line change in your config, but don't miss it when upgrading.

Node.js Support Updated EOL Node.js versions are dropped. Supported versions: Node 20 (≥20.19.4), Node 22, and Node 24+. Versions 21 and 23 are no longer supported.

StyleSheet.absoluteFillObject Removed This deprecated API is gone. Migrate to StyleSheet.absoluteFill or define your own absolute positioning styles.

📦 Other Noteworthy Updates

• Metro bumped to ^0.84.0
• YogaNode migrated to Kotlin on Android
• AccessibilityInfo.setAccessibilityFocus deprecated in favor of sendAccessibilityEvent
• TypeScript utility type improvements ($Values, mixed, $ReadOnly, $ReadOnlyArray)
• 604+ commits from 58 contributors

🧭 Should You Upgrade?

If you're on 0.82.x — note that it's now moved to unsupported. 0.85 is the new stable. Use the React Native Upgrade Helper to plan your migration path.

For Expo users, SDK 56 will ship with React Native 0.85.

The animation backend alone makes this release a landmark. Cross-platform animation has always been one of React Native's trickiest surfaces — 0.85 lays the groundwork for a significantly smoother developer experience going forward.

What are you most excited to try? Drop a comment below 👇

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