Expo is becoming the mobile equivalent of NextJS for mobile app development
The rise of Expo feels oddly familiar to those who witnessed Next.js transform the React ecosystem. Just as Next.js emerged to optimize web development, Expo is quietly reshaping the React Native landscape into something more similar.
There’s a certain nostalgia in watching Expo’s journey. Like Next.js before it, Expo started as a simple toolset that made React Native more accessible to newcomers. But what began as “React Native with training wheels” has evolved into something far more different. Today’s Expo is becoming the opinionated, full-featured framework that React Native perhaps always needed.
Veteran mobile developers might remember the early days: the endless configuration files, the native module headaches, the development environment mysteries. Expo swept in with a promise that felt almost too good to be true — “just write JavaScript and ship.” While purists initially scoffed, the framework has matured beyond its “developer-friendly” roots into a serious contender for production applications.
The parallel with Next.js is striking. Both frameworks chose to sacrifice some flexibility for dramatically improved developer experience. Both grew to embrace more complex use cases without losing their core simplicity. And both have become de facto standards in their respective domains.
Yet Expo isn’t just following Next.js’s playbook — it’s writing its own chapter in cross-platform development. As mobile development grows more complex, Expo’s vision of unified, javascript-driven mobile development feels less like a convenience and more like a glimpse into the future.
Thank you for reading until the end. Before you go:
If you’re looking to start a new Expo project, check out my expo starter kit. It will help you bootstrap your project quickly :
https://expostarter.com
