RSD has gone quiet — what can we do about it?

[MoOx]

React Strict DOM is one of the most promising approaches to cross-platform React development. The philosophy behind it — writing styled components using web standards that work on both web and native — is exactly what the ecosystem needs. I believe in this project and I want to see it thrive.

But I think we need to have an honest conversation about where things stand.

What I'm seeing

The last release (0.0.54) was in October 2025 — 6 months ago. Since then, PRs have been accumulating without review, several discussions remain unanswered, and important issues are sitting idle. Meanwhile, the community is still active: people are adopting RSD, asking questions, and trying to contribute.

What's at stake

There are foundational topics that need attention for RSD to reach its potential:

• SVG support — a significant gap across all platforms (feature) <svg> element #4 / Implement <svg> support #272
• StyleX dependency updates — RSD is still on 0.15.x
• Stronger TypeScript types
• Cross-platform virtualization patterns (Cross-platform virtualization #417)
• Accessibility gaps — incomplete role support on native ([a11y] role prop not fully supported on React Native #422)
• and many more interesting issues

These aren't niche requests — they're blockers for broader adoption.

What I'd love to see happen

I'm not here to complain. I'm here because I want to help. A few questions for different people reading this:

• @necolas — Is there anything you can share about your availability or plans for RSD going forward? Even a brief status update would help the community align.
• To the Meta / React Native team — Is RSD still part of Meta's roadmap? If internal priorities have shifted, would you be open to giving community members more ownership over the project?
• To everyone using or watching RSD — If you care about this project's future, now is the time to speak up. React to this discussion, share what you're building with RSD, and let's show that the demand is real.

The community is here and ready to contribute. RSD is too good of an idea to let it stall. ❤️

[Freddy03h]

Hi, I’m a solo developer working on a cross-platform application. I’ve had a React Native app in production for 9 years, along with its PWA counterpart using React Native Web for the past 4 years. Cross-platform development is essential for me.

From my perspective, solutions like react-strict-dom, which push cross-platform capabilities further, are key to making it realistically possible to bring applications to less dominant platforms such as macOS, Windows, Horizon, or visionOS. Without this kind of approach, it becomes very difficult to seriously consider supporting those platforms. I strongly align with the vision behind react-strict-dom, which I believe is a step in the right direction and potentially an important part of the future of React Native.

That said, I’ve become a bit concerned about the project given the lack of updates in recent months. I’m also aware that the project lead and main contributor is no longer at Meta.
Could you share any updates on the current status of react-strict-dom, particularly regarding its internal adoption and future direction?

Thank you.

[yaminyassin]

What's really concerning is the lack of a roadmap and updates from meta around the project. React Native has made strides in getting web capabilities and this project really needs to be taking advantage of them

[joaqo]

After a bit of pushing from my side we eventually migrated our 130kLOC app/web to RSD. We absolutely love it, but I'm deeply concerned about the non responsiveness of the devs. Even just a "yep this is still alive" from @necolas would be great for my blood pressure lol.

[blazejkustra]

@joaqo check his bio, he is no longer at Meta 😢

[joaqo]

I know, but I still think it would be nice of him to inform us of what the state of this is. They made a lot of noise a few months ago about how RSD was the future of cross platform, we put our trust in them, and now I think we at least deserve to know whats happening.

[DonBrody]

I'm the tech lead for an enterprise design system. We have two separate libraries (one for web/React and one for mobile/RN). We've been making strides internally to make the eventual move to a single RSD based design system by aligning our interfaces and sharing utilities, icons, and theme configuration between ecosystems. We're even moving our web ecosystem (for the whole company) to StyleX. But we're also starting to become concerned that progress has slowed down here, Discussions/Issues are going unanswered, and that PR's are stacking up.

Has Meta abandoned this effort? What can the community do to help keep this project moving forward?

[MoOx]

We can always fork this.

[joaqo]

Yeah. RSD is just too good to let die, nothing comes even close.

[MoOx]

I have to admit that I am still surprised that any cross platform kit is famous enough to be a default choice, even if people only target a single platform (mobile or web). For many projects, a mobile app can make sense for various reasons, and web can also be a good fallback for lots of other reasons.
For real, I am confused about this thing: why nobody wants a cross platform solution ? What am I missing ?

[MoOx]

poke @SamChou19815 since you recently committed in this repo

[nmn]

Since I gave the cross-platform react talk I feel a bit responsible so I’ll chime in. Know that I haven’t worked at Meta for a year now so none of this is official.

1. It has already been mentioned that Nicolas no longer works at Meta and he was pretty much the only person maintaining RSD
2. Meta had initially invested in RSD as part of the effort to build Facebook and IG for Quest. Those apps launched and were of decent quality IMO. But had fairly low usage (probably because people don’t want 2d social apps in VR) and the apps were sunset and RSD lost its primary internal client.
3. Meta has been going hard on AI recently. At the cost of other projects like React and RSD.

I think a community oriented future for RSD is technically possible, but I don’t know about all the corporate politics involved.

I have contributed on and off to StyleX in the year since I left and as long as there’s someone working internally, it possible to get PRs merged. If the community did enough of the work, just getting PRs merged should be easier than more active development.

[Freddy03h]

Thanks for the insights!
Is it official that Meta is sunsetting Instagram and Facebook on Quest?
If so, I don’t really see the point of porting apps to the Quest platform…

[nmn]

I can’t speak to what is “official” or not as I haven’t worked there in a little over a year now.

[Freddy03h]

Ok, I’m asking because IG and FB still seem to be available on the Quest Store.

[ninoalte]

Lol I just went to the react native for web repo, seems abandoned (last commit 7months) ago, maintainer strongly recommends to use his new thing, react strict dom. Come here, last commit also 7 months ago, also abandoned. To have one person be the maintainer of such important repos is a little questionable

[MoOx]

@martinbooth since you merged PRs recently, could you give us some insights ?

[martinbooth]

Unfortunately some of the people responsible for driving RSD have left meta which does mean the rate of development is slower. That said, the project is not abandoned and within meta we're building new products with it.

I work on one of those teams and RSD is an important dependency for us, so I will be stepping up to try and get these PRs reviewed/feedback and also bring it up internally that the community would be interested in contributing/keeping this project alive as I believe that would benefit all of us.

I am working my way through reviewing other PRs, but some of them will take me a little while as they're pretty big.

As for meta sunsetting facebook/instagram apps on the quest.. That would be news to me (and I used to be on the IG quest team). The facebook quest app definitely makes heavy use of RSD and IG quest was never a RSD customer until recently

Finally, to address a couple of the points in the original post:

• SVG is unlikely to be something that we add to RSD. The performance cost of rendering SVGs has shown to be significant and we avoid them on any of the apps I've worked on.
• I'll look at updating the stylex dependency.. that should be straightforward
• Typescript types might be something we need support from the community for as we use flow here

Thanks for raising this

[thymikee]

@martinbooth appreaciate this response so much! let me know how we could help

[yaminyassin]

Thanks @martinbooth, great to hear this update. Happy to help where it's useful.

If you've got a shortlist of PRs or issues you'd like to address, drop them here and a few of us can divide and conquer.

[MoOx]

@martinbooth thanks for all this information. I am glad to learn that RSD isn't abandoned - because after a month without any answer here, I was a bit concerned (I created this thread Apr 2...).
That would have been a bad new for expo (see https://x.com/Baconbrix/status/2053866784957362302 cc @EvanBacon).

About some important issues, here is a list of what I see:

• stylex upgrade : let's track this via freshly created Bump @stylexjs/stylex and @stylexjs/babel-plugin to ^0.16.2 #476
• svg: let's discuss a bit about this in (feature) <svg> element #4
• cross-platform virtualization patterns Cross-platform virtualization #417
• accessibility gaps — incomplete role support on native ([a11y] role prop not fully supported on React Native #422)
• react-strict-animated ! It has been merged, but unreleased ! Also see [react-strict-animated] add perf benchmarks for render and start paths #445 & add react-strict-animated example app #444
• babel codemod for RN to RSD transform that should be merged & released if stable (I didn't investigated yet on this) Add babel codemod for RN to RSD transform #453

I would love to help to triage issue & PRs (too many opened to be honest...) @martinbooth how do you think we could handle this ?

Are you ok if I create a PR that will closes all the "Bump xxx" issues ? That will make a long commit like Closes #Xxx #Yyy #Zzz but since I don't have maintainer right on this repo, that's a thing I can do.

cc @yaminyassin if you want to contribute to those discussions

So only question here about typescript: would you be ok that I created an issue to discuss this a bit more or track what should we done about it ?

So here is a last opened question: what about React Foundation ? Could this be a project that could end up there ? Is someone using RSD also involved in RF ? See react-foundation-dev/react.foundation#62

[martinbooth]

• react-strict-animated

OK, stylex has been updated now

Sure, if you create a PR that fixes the Bump xxx issues, I'll review and merge... let's not let the PR get too large in case it needs to be reverted and it reverts unrelated useful fixes

I do think that React Foundation could be a reasonable home for this, but I'll need to do some research within meta to find out if this would be a good fit, and if so how to go about it

I'll leave some comments on those issues

[MoOx]

I opened some PR to tackle some minor issues easy to review.

That said, there are plenty of PR that should be reviewed and considered for merging. What approach we could have to clean this a little ? Same for issues, a lot could be handled and are not blocked.

I pinged you on some, let me know if I shouldn't mention you (to avoid notifications overflow).

Regarding React Foundation, I made 2 PR for RSD & Stylex react-foundation-dev/react.foundation#62 react-foundation-dev/react.foundation#62 react-foundation-dev/react.foundation#63 but I am not sure what it means in real life. At least those projects appears on the website https://react.foundation/about (in Supported Ecosystem)