Cross-platform app development frameworks allow developers to create mobile applications that are compatible with more than one operating system (iOS, Android) and reuse web codebase. It provides them with the ability to write the code once and then run it anywhere.
- React Native - The best choice of the cross-platform framework as it combines the best parts of native development with React, a best-in-class JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
- Flutter - Google’s UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase.
- Xamarin - Extends the .NET developer platform with tools and libraries specifically for building apps for Android, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, macOS, and Windows.
- Ionic - Free and open source component library for building apps that run on iOS, Android, Electron, and the Web. Write your app once using familiar technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and deploy to any platform.
- Cordova - Wraps your HTML/JavaScript app into a native container which can access the device functions of several platforms. These functions are exposed via a unified JavaScript API, allowing you to easily write one set of code to target nearly every phone or tablet on the market today and publish to their app stores.
Given the exponential increase in the cost of per platform development and the need for rapid time to market, cross-platform development is the way to go in recent years. These frameworks has following common features:
- Write once run anywhere
- Fast development feedback
- Over-the-air updates
- Native performance