Bringing React to the Big Screen

Focus management is a well known challenge in React Native TV app development. This article explores various solutions provided by the react-native-tvos project, including components like TVFocusGuideView and enhancements to existing components, to help developers handle focus more effectively across different TV platforms.

So far, adoption of React Native for TV has been limited, and this has meant a lack of an industry standard defined for efficient components and APIs for TV devices. This results in poor performance out-of-the-box and many TV app developers fall into the pitfall of using components and APIs in React Native that are built for mobile, only to find that they are unoptimised for TV.

Frameworks such as React Native and Electron.JS both offer abstractions allowing developers to use established web technologies to build applications on native mobile and desktop platforms respectively - the concept of “Universal” Apps takes this a step further. This article discusses how we might use the lessons described in Robert C. Martin’s Clean Architecture to create a single app which can be distributed natively across all platforms. At Theodo, we've deployed Universal Apps to production for streaming services and we're currently researching how this architecture extends to TV apps.

Adding Native Functionality to your TV App with Turbo Modules

A declarative approach to solve the navigation problem