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The part React Native does not cover

Native iOS features, added to your React Native app.

Your app works. Then someone asks for a Live Activity, a widget, a Siri shortcut or a Watch app, and the JavaScript runs out. That is the moment most teams either drop the feature or hire an iOS contractor who does not know the codebase.

Tell me what you needSee it shipped

What I add

Six things, all of them shipped.

Live Activities and the Dynamic Island

ActivityKit

A countdown, a delivery, a match score that stays on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island without anyone reopening the app. Three layouts to get right — compact, minimal, expanded — and update budgets Apple enforces quietly.

Shipped in Ticket, a parking timer, and in Qindil for prayer times.

Siri, Shortcuts and the Control Center

App Intents

Actions your app exposes to the system: a Siri phrase, a Shortcuts block, a Control Center button that works without unlocking the phone. Since WWDC 2026 this is the only route — SiriKit is deprecated, and apps still using it are invisible to the new Siri.

Ticket starts a parking session from Siri, from an NFC tag, or from the Control Center.

Home screen and Lock Screen widgets

WidgetKit

The widget itself is straightforward. The part that breaks is data: an App Group, a shared store, and a refresh policy that decides when iOS actually redraws it. Most widgets that show stale data fail here.

Widgets in Pilou, Amiens and Qindil, each reading data the React Native side writes.

An Apple Watch companion

SwiftUI + WatchConnectivity

React Native does not run on watchOS. The watch app is SwiftUI, full stop. What can be shared is the model and the logic; what has to be written twice is the interface. Worth knowing before anyone promises otherwise.

Watch apps in Qindil and in Amiens · Bus & Vélam.

A local database that survives the app

SwiftData

A real domain model, not a bag of key-value pairs: relationships, migrations, and queries that stay fast as the data grows. On device, with no server and no account.

Pilou holds the full vaccination schedule, weight history and observations for each animal.

Apps that work with no signal

Offline first

Not a cache bolted on afterwards, but a decision taken before the first screen: what ships inside the binary, what syncs, and what the app shows when it has nothing.

Isogonic makes no network call, ever. Amiens embeds the full timetable.

If your app still uses SiriKit, it is already invisible to Siri.

Apple deprecated SiriKit at WWDC 2026. Since iOS 27, apps built on it still compile, but receive no voice traffic, no Spotlight indexing and no Apple Intelligence personalisation. The two frameworks are not interchangeable: an existing SiriKit integration has to be deliberately ported to App Intents, not flipped over. If that applies to you, it is worth looking at sooner rather than later.

Installed, not described

You can download these right now.

Ticket

Navigation · live since 2 September 2026

You park, you tap a duration. That is all.

SwiftSwiftUIActivityKitApp IntentsWidgetKit+1

Qindil

Lifestyle · live since 20 August 2026

A Muslim app written in French. Free, no account, no server.

React NativeTypeScriptAudio natifSwiftUI (Watch)ActivityKit

Pilou

Lifestyle · live since 24 August 2026

Your dog or cat’s health record, always in your pocket.

SwiftSwiftUISwiftDataWidgetKitSwift Charts+1

Which feature is blocking you?

Describe it in a few lines and I will tell you how I would approach it, including whether it is worth doing at all.