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NativeScript

NativeScript

Overview

What is NativeScript?

NativeScript is an open source framework that allows you to create native iOS and Android apps, with one codebase, using ​the web skills you already have (JavaScript and CSS) and ​the libraries you already love​.

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Pricing

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What is NativeScript?

NativeScript is an open source framework that allows you to create native iOS and Android apps, with one codebase, using ​the web skills you already have (JavaScript and CSS) and ​the libraries you already love​.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.nativescript.org/nativescri…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

NativeScript Realtime Development

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How to Build Apps with NativeScript

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7 - Optimizing the Startup time of NativeScript Angular Apps

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NativeScript & WordPress REST API Demo LiveSync

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How to Build Enterprise Apps with Kinvey & NativeScript Demo

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Optimizing startup time of NativeScript Angular apps

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Product Details

What is NativeScript?

NativeScript is an open source framework that allows you to create native iOS and Android apps, with one codebase, using ​the web skills you already have (JavaScript and CSS) and ​the libraries you already love​.

NativeScript Features

  • Supported: Reuse web skills (JavaScript, CSS) to create truly native mobile apps for iOS and Android
  • Supported: Deep integration with popular JavaScript frameworks like Angular or Vue to minimize learning curve
  • Supported: Extensive code sharing between mobile platforms (including UI) and web apps (when used with Angular)
  • Supported: Deliver high-quality mobile apps to multiple platforms faster, using web developers you already have

NativeScript Screenshots

Screenshot of Example of a styled NativeScript list viewScreenshot of Charts and graphs available as part of NativeScript UIScreenshot of Groceries – the app you build as part of the getting started tutorialScreenshot of Leverage native mapping systems with NativeScript

NativeScript Video

This spring and summer have been full of new NativeScript features, tooling options, and improvements. NativeScript is evolving into something more than just an open source framework. In this webinar, we'll talk about all the new goodies for you and show you how you can crush it in mobile app development

NativeScript Competitors

NativeScript Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
(1-5 of 13)

NativeScript makes cross-platform mobile app development easy, fast, and efficient.

Rating: 10 out of 10
April 10, 2018
MB
Vetted Review
NativeScript
4 years of experience
We are a consulting company and use NativeScript for apps internally and externally for customers. We chose to use NativeScript as a mobile app development platform because of its native performance, native UI generation, and ease of cross-platform mobile development. Furthermore, we can leverage existing skills on our development teams (Angular, TypeScript, and CSS) to create native mobile apps. This was the first platform we tried that was easy to get started with, and provided the least amount of friction for developing mobile apps.
  • NativeScript allows you to build on skills many development teams already have: HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Many developers understand the paradigm of web development where you have HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to define an application's behavior. NativeScript apps are similar. By using a similar paradigm of development, it enables web developers to quickly jump into their first app, write it quickly, and see the results on iOS and Android.
  • The NativeScript Playground sets NativeScript apart from other technologies. The NativeScript Playground is a browser-based environment for developing simple NativeScript apps. It’s a great place to get started learning NativeScript, as you can develop apps without needing to install the various SDKs and tools needed for native iOS and Android development. All you need is your browser, and an Android or iOS mobile device connected to the internet to get started. We use the NativeScript Playground to quickly prototype apps. It's an extremely powerful tool.
  • NativeScript provides abstracted UI and component APIs to access native iOS and Android hardware and UI components. This accelerates development because you can write a singular UI and business logic code for both iOS and Android, thus saving time. At the same time, you have the ability to access native SDK/APIs of the underlying platforms through JavaScript.
  • NativeScript has three flavors of development: NativeScript Core, Angular, and VueJS. NativeScript Core uses XML, JavaScript, and CSS to build native apps. But, if your developers already know Angular or VueJS, then you can build NativeScript apps using Angular/VueJS development paradigms.
  • There are dozens of online resources for getting started, troubleshooting, and staying up-to-date with NativeScript: forums, slack channel, twitter, online docs, NativeScript snacks, NativeScripting, blogs, etc. The community has been very strong, and continues to be a shining star NativeScript.
Cons
  • If users jump directly into NativeScript Angular and are not familiar with NativeScript or Angular yet, it can be difficult to understand where NativeScript ends and Angular begins. This can be confusing.
NativeScript is great for line of business apps, quick prototypes, and production apps. NativeScript isn't designed for heavy 3D graphics and gaming apps, as other platforms like Unity do this well and are highly optimized.

NativeScript - Cross platform app development for n00bs

Rating: 10 out of 10
February 15, 2018
DC
Vetted Review
Verified User
NativeScript
2 years of experience
I use NativeScript as the primary platform for developing native mobile applications. We have a native mobile app called Daily Nanny (dailynannyapp.com) used by thousands of parents and nannies, and the Android and iOS applications were built using NativeScript. I had no experience building native mobile applications, but I was able to apply my expertise in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to build and release a cross-platform application in a fraction of the time it would have taken to build two different apps on two different platforms.
  • Native Performance: NativeScript apps are entirely Native. They are not hybrid apps, each UI element is from each platform's UI library, so the performance is that of an application developed in Java for Android or Xcode/Swift for iOS.
  • Framework Support: The NativeScript team and community have put a lot of emphasis on being able to use javascript frameworks within NativeScript. There is an angular implementation that lets you develop using Angular 2 and even share code among web applications.
  • Plugins: The NativeScript community is a vibrant contributor to the plugin marketplace. You can find a plugin for almost any functionality.
  • Access to Native APIs: With the way the NativeScript is built, you have access to all Native APIs as soon as they are available on the device, NativeScript does not need to expose access. So as soon as a new feature comes out in the OS, you can utilize it in your NativeScript app.
Cons
  • Documentation Clarity: Due to the many different ways you can write NativeScript apps (Vanilla JS, TypeScript, Angular, Vue, Webpack), the documentation is not always accurate.
  • If your team has accomplished web developers but no Native developers, NativeScript will allow them to use their current skills to create Native Mobile Apps.
  • If you need device-specific functionality, it's easy to tap into Native APIs.
  • If you have web apps built using Angular 2, you can create a NativeScript application and even share some code.

Climb to NativeScript, enjoy the Vue...

Rating: 9 out of 10
July 24, 2018
TA
Vetted Review
Verified User
NativeScript
1 year of experience
We are testing NativeScript to see if it will be a good fit for the next version of our app. We have an e-learning education platform focused on mobile. Our current version is built on ionic v1, and we are looking for a better alternative. Our app needs to be offline first, but the courses and content are downloaded from the internet. The app has lots of gamification features. It needs to be much slicker than it is now in the current stack.
  • True native app. The app uses native components and that is quite noticeable in the overall performance of the app. NativeScript is also awesome in the way we can access the native APIs, so we are never really constrained by the framework. If we need, we can just dive into the native APIs without leaving our environment and language (JS).
  • Cross-platform. Builds for Android and iOS. It deals with the platforms differences very well.
  • Support for Vue.js. Even though it is just a community effort, the NativeScript-Vue plugin is the best alternative to build native Apps with Vue.js. That was a major factor to go with NativeScript.
Cons
  • Web build. It is still hard to share code with a web build. In our case, we want to build a web app with pretty much the same functionality. Other frameworks are stronger at this point.
  • No hot-reload. It still takes a couple of seconds to test an app. React Native does it better... With NS-Vue, the live-reload is even more fragile...
  • Tooling. Overall, NS could use better tooling. Again, RN does it better.
  • Better NS-Vue support. It is improving very well, considering it is a community effort. I see NS organization 100% supporting NS-Vue, but it is still not at the same level as NS-Ng, for instance.
I would recommend for building native apps for iOS or Android if 1) the developers come from a web dev background; 2) the company can't afford separate teams for Android and iOS; 3) the team wants to use Vue.js.

I would not recommend if the app needs a web version and is simple enough to be a hybrid app.

The best possible way to develop your next Android and iOS application.

Rating: 10 out of 10
April 10, 2018
Vetted Review
Verified User
NativeScript
2 years of experience
I currently use NativeScript for multiple applications that are in various stages of development. In my opinion, NativeScript is one of the best if not the best frameworks to write Android and iOS Applications. With NativeScript I'm able to reuse concepts and knowledge of existing frameworks such as Angular or Vue.js to build Applications that actually use native elements and have native performance. A common problem with multi-platform development is eventually you will encounter a situation where the framework doesn't have a feature you need to complete a task. This is true for all multi-platform frameworks, including NativeScript. However, with NativeScript you have access to the native API for iOS and Android. This allows us as developers to solve our own problems and not lose momentum whereas other frameworks we would be at the mercy of plugin developers or have to write Java and/or Objective C code ourselves to sometimes solve very small but frustrating tasks.
  • Code Reuse - With NativeScript you can share code between Native and Mobile Applications.
  • Native APIs - being able to access Native APIs allows us as developers to write applications in one language instead of jumping between the Java/Objective C apps are written in TypeScript or JavaScript.
  • Ease of use - NativeScript SideKick makes working with NativeScript a breeze and allows us to get an application set up for development in a few minutes.
Cons
  • Occasionally there are inconsistencies when it comes to styling and layouts between Android and iOS, this can be frustrating especially in the beginning because you are usually working with one platform and then switch to the other only to have layout issues.
  • New releases sometimes are buggy.
NativeScript is well suited for most smartphone applications, I'm using it for a motion sensing application, a Roku remote and a streaming music service application, however, it is not for game development.

NativeScript - Mobile App Development on Steroids

Rating: 10 out of 10
April 10, 2018
SP
Vetted Review
Verified User
NativeScript
1 year of experience
I work at a fitness based startup. Our app, "AnyGo" is built entirely using NativeScript. I was the one who proposed to the team, to use NativeScript. And today when I look back, I'm glad that I found NativeScript. We were able to launch our app in 6 months, all thanks to NativeScript. I worked on the app, while 3 other developers built the backend on NodeJS.
  • NativeScript has a large repository of plugins at market.nativescript.org for the times when you want to boost your development speed.
  • NativeScript gives you 100% day zero Native API access.
  • NativeScript doesn't use any webview to render the UI. So you get Native UI, and therefore better performance, when compared to things like ionic or phone gap.
  • With NativeScript you get 4 architectural choices, JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular and Vue. Choose the one you are comfortable with.
Cons
  • Nativescript runs everything on a single thread. i.e., the UI thread. If you want to offload some processing, you have to use web workers. This experience can be improved in the future releases.
  • Currently NativeScript only have hot reload when you change the UI file or Css file. There is no hot reload when you change Js/Ts file, unlike Google's Flutter. This is also something which NativeScript will get in the future releases.
  • In current version of NativeScript, there is no livesync when building with webpack. This feature will be added with NativeScript 4.x. (an RC version for 4.x is already available)
When you want to target Web and Mobile (iOS + Android), using a single code base. Then you can use NativeScript Angular or NativeScript Vue. If your app is going to do a lot of heavy lifting in the background, requires building widgets that can be added on homescreen, or simply is going to be a service, which doesn't require UI, then NativeScript is not an ideal fit for that project.
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