Hybrid Apps: IDEs & Tools

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This page lists the editors and tools most commonly used to build React Native and Ionic apps, with a link to each product’s official page. Hybrid projects are written in an editor of choice, but running on a device or emulator still needs the native toolchains: Android Studio for Android and Xcode for iOS. This site has a dedicated section for React Native; Ionic has no dedicated section on this site yet.

Editors

  • VS Code — a widely used editor for TypeScript and JavaScript projects.

  • WebStorm — JetBrains' IDE for JavaScript and TypeScript with built-in framework support.

  • React Native Tools — a VS Code extension for debugging and running React Native apps.

  • Ionic VS Code extension — a VS Code extension for creating, running and managing Ionic projects.

Native toolchains

  • Android Studio — provides the Android SDK, emulator and build tools needed to run hybrid apps on Android.

  • Xcode — provides the iOS SDK, Simulator and signing tools needed to run hybrid apps on Apple devices; it requires a Mac.

  • Android Emulator — runs virtual Android devices for testing.

  • React Native environment setup — the official guide to installing the native toolchains and simulators for React Native.

React Native and Expo tooling

  • Expo — the framework and toolchain recommended for new React Native projects.

  • Expo Go — a sandbox app for running Expo projects on a physical device without a native build.

  • Expo Dev Client — a custom development build that includes your own native code.

Ionic and Capacitor tooling

  • Ionic Framework — a UI toolkit for building mobile apps with web technologies.

  • Ionic CLI — the command-line tool for creating, serving and building Ionic projects.

  • Capacitor — a native runtime that packages web apps for Android and iOS and gives them access to device APIs.

See also