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State of JavaScript 2024

Mobile & Desktop

JavaScript for mobile devices and desktop apps

Mobile & Desktop Tools Ratios Over Time

Over the past decade, building mobile and desktop apps has become far more common – yet that doesn't mean developers are necessarily happy with their tools.

While Tauri and Expo stand out at the top of the retention chart, everything else has a lower ratio compared to good old Native Apps.

Electron
React Native
Native Apps
Cordova
Ionic
Capacitor
NW.js
Expo
Quasar
Tauri
NativeScript

Mode:

View:

0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%

Other Mobile & Desktop Tools

0%
7%
13%
20%
27%
33%
1

21
2

PWA

15
3

3
4

one

2
5

2
6

2
7

2
8

webview_bridge

2
9

Fraction.js

1
10

1
11

Other Answers

23
0%
7%
13%
20%
27%
33%
% of question respondents
69
0.5%

Used at Work

Once again newer tools like Tauri seem to primarily be used in the workplace by less experienced developers, which goes to show that not having all that baggage can sometimes be a good thing!

0%
10%
20%
29%
39%
49%
1

2,564
2

1,998
3

1,256
4

1,081
5

833
6

732
7

515
8

483
9

264
10

136
11

66
12

🚫 None

4,805
0%
10%
20%
29%
39%
49%
% of question respondents
9,839
72%
Which of these tools do you use in a professional context?
We asked members of the JavaScript community to share their “pick of the year”

My 2024 Pick: Knip

Knip is an amazing tool that analyzes your code and tells you what you can get rid of. It’s fast (so you can run it in CI), understands many frameworks and libraries out of the box, and works seamlessly in monorepos, too.
We asked members of the JavaScript community to share their “pick of the year”

Dominik Dorfmeister

Software Engineer @ Sentry, React Query maintainer

Number of Items

How many items in this category respondends have used (or heard of).

View:

0%
8%
16%
24%
33%
41%
1

0

5,715
2

1

2,186
3

2

2,250
4

3

1,620
5

4

995
6

5

616
7

6

345
8

7

170
9

8

74
10

9

30
11

10

9
12

11

5
0%
8%
16%
24%
33%
41%
% of survey respondents
1.6

Mobile & Desktop Happiness

0
1
2
3
4
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
0
1
2
3
4
Average {axis}
10,671
76%
2.1
2
How happy are you with the current state of mobile & desktop tools?

Mobile & Desktop Pain Points

JavaScript codebases still struggle to compete against pure native apps in terms of performance. And it seems like both Electron and React Native have their share of drawbacks.

0%
19%
37%
56%
75%
94%
1

Performance

2

3

4

Configuration

5

Excessive complexity

6

Breaking changes

7

Native APIs access

8

iOS

9

10

Bundle size

0%
19%
37%
56%
75%
94%
% of question respondents
1,123
8%
What pain points have you encountered when using JavaScript to build mobile & desktop apps?
(freeform question)

Recommended Resources

React Native, v3
Kadi Kraman
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React Native, v3

Use your React skills to build feature-rich, native mobile apps for iOS and Android using React Native and Expo. Learn to create UI components like custom buttons and scrollable lists, implement navigation between screens, and persist data using AsyncStorage.
Electron, v3
Steve Kinney
Temporal

Electron, v3

Build native, cross-platform desktop apps using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and React.js with Electron. Get hands-on experience building real-world apps for the menubar and system tray.
Thanks to our partners for supporting us! Learn more.