What’s New in Cross-Platform App Development?

Cross-platform solutions can’t lose their popularity in a world where users prioritize accessibility and business founders choose cost-efficiency. However, those who have encountered the development of cross-platform apps know that the write-once-run-everywhere concept is more of a marketing fiction than reality. So, has modern technology gotten any closer to that? Let's take a look at some cross-platform app development trends you might have missed to find out.

Flutter is Taking Over the Market

Flutter provides the building blocks for natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. App development with Flutter is a popular choice for developers thanks to its ease of use, quick development times, and excellent performance. So it’s not surprising that Flutter is the most popular cross-platform framework according to Statista.

With the expansion of the technology to the web due to the release of Flutter 2.0, it continues to develop its cross-platform capabilities. Today Flutter is a great choice for teams looking to build progressive web apps (PWA) or single-page applications (SPA). These tools aren’t quite as powerful as leveraging the native capabilities of a smartphone or desktop machine, but they make creating accessible applications much easier.

Comparing cross-platform frameworks shows Flutter's strengths and how it continues to improve over the years. The details of Flutter’s next feature update aren’t certain. They are expected to release a new rendering engine for 3D models. This may improve the performance of apps with many moving objects on the screen and expand Flutter’s use cases to web games.

React Native Abandons the Concept of the Bridge

React Native has been known for its bridge architecture for years. The bridge allows JavaScript to communicate with the native code and share data.

The bridge approach worked, but it came with some performance tradeoffs. The React Native team has been working on alternatives to the bridge method. This work resulted in a New Architecture that abandons the bridge in favor of the JavaScript Interface (JSI). This enables direct method invocation between JavaScript and C++ objects. In principle, this makes it faster and more direct for JavaScript code to interact with the native parts of your application.

As a result of these new changes, developers will be able to focus more on performance and flexibility. Along with that, teams can enjoy a more streamlined React Native development experience. Despite these advantages, it’s important to note that the New Architecture isn’t fully stable yet and not all plugins are supported. So not all apps can switch to it just yet.

MAUI Replaces Xamarin

For years, Xamarin was a framework for developing cross-platform applications in C# with the .NET stack. The next step in the evolution of Xamarin is MAUI. In May 2024, Microsoft plans to discontinue Xamarin, leaving MAUI for cross-platform app development as the next alternative for .NET developers.

Built on top of Xamarin.Forms, MAUI is a modernized architecture designed to take advantage of the latest features of .NET 6. This promises stronger performance, greater reliability, and improved integration with other .NET tools. MAUI also offers improved support for debugging, testing, and deployment. As a result, teams will find MAUI is able to increase productivity and it will be possible to complete projects faster.

Some developers state that MAUI isn’t ready for large applications. Stability improvements are needed, but it’s important for businesses to consider the future of MAUI and whether or not it’s right for them. If you’re looking to work within the .NET stack and have a small simple project, there’s nothing stopping your team from shifting to MAUI right now. However, larger and more complex projects may be a good indicator that your team should wait for stability updates.

The Incorporation of Emerging Technologies is on the Rise

Cross-platform apps are integrating more and more with emerging technologies. As a result, apps are becoming more advanced, and innovative, as well as offering more unique experiences than ever before.

Although these technologies are growing more popular, not all of them work well with cross-platform development tools. For example, Android and iOS devices utilize different augmented reality frameworks. This means that cross-platform technologies can’t guarantee platform-independent logic. This is even more important when teams realize that the capabilities of Android and iOS smartphones for AR may be different depending on the hardware and software. The option to create two separate apps, one for iOS and one for Android, still offers more advantages in productivity, cost-effectiveness, and maintenance.

Meanwhile, there are other tools that work well with cross-platform app development, like artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Accessibility Matters

One of the most important components of a mobile app is accessibility. Ensuring equitable access to users with disabilities allows for greater connection with your audience and also improves user retention. Not only that, but many countries have regulations that require websites and applications to have certain accessibility features. This makes it even more important to consider accessibility when creating cross-platform applications.

It may be helpful for teams to utilize mobile accessibility testing. This will allow your team to see how real users interact with the app and gain feedback from some of your audience before making a wider release.

Accessibility isn’t just for people with disabilities. Making your app easy to use is important for everyone who uses it. For example, captions and transcripts for videos not only help those with hearing disabilities but also helps people who prefer to watch videos without sound.

What’s Next?

Write-once-run-anywhere is an attractive approach for many businesses. The demand for these kinds of cross-platform apps means that more tools will continue to be developed to make the process easier. As these development tools provide more and more similar experiences to native applications, it becomes more likely that cross-platform approaches will be chosen. As an example, Flutter is already very close to the performance of native applications in some cases.

However, startups and other businesses should still question whether cross-platform is right for them. For example, cross-platform technologies aren’t yet ready to handle the full potential of native AR frameworks on Android and iOS, and the disparity in hardware capabilities cements that fact. It’s likely that over time this will change and cross-platform will spread to even more use cases.