React Native Best Practices

Chapter 1 · Practice 5 of 5

Upgrade one minor version at a time with the Upgrade Helper

From Project setup and upgrades

Why it matters

React Native ships a new minor release every couple of months, and only the latest few are supported. When 0.87 came out in August 2026, 0.84.x moved to unsupported. Falling three or four versions behind turns a routine upgrade into a project.

A reliable routine:

  1. Read the release post for breaking changes and removed APIs.
  2. Use the React Native Upgrade Helper to see the exact diff of template files between your version and the next.
  3. Check the minimum toolchain. For 0.87 that is Node.js 22.13.0 or newer, and Android libraries must target compileSdk 34 or higher.
  4. Upgrade one minor at a time, run the app on both platforms, then move on.

If you use Expo, upgrade through the Expo SDK instead. Each SDK pins a React Native version: SDK 57 maps to React Native 0.86 and React 19.2.3.

Do

  • Put the upgrade on the calendar for each new minor release
  • Keep Node, Xcode, Gradle and Kotlin versions in the repo and in CI in sync

Avoid

  • Jumping several minor versions in one pull request