[Future of rive for react-native] Maintenance status of this library?

[christophemenager]

Context

I have been using the Rive React Native package for over 2 years.
I have recommended Rive as an alternative to Lottie in several companies I worked at and to my developer friends.

Today, I regret it, for one main reason: the maintenance of this library.

It is clear that React Native is not a priority for Rive at the moment:

• A critical glitching bug took 6 months to be resolved (#283).
• It is impossible to build the library since React Native 0.80 (released July 2025). (as a reminder, there was also a problem with 0.77 for weeks)
• Several critical PRs remain open without being merged or even commented on (#350).
• Patches keep piling up to prevent crashes (#190 comment).
• A rewrite of the library has been announced, but no updates have been provided for a long time (#190 comment).

In short, these issues are accumulating and significantly undermine the value Rive aims to bring to the animation world.

Questions

• Can we have a clear and honest update from a Rive representative regarding the future of this library?
• Do you plan to dedicate regular attention to it, rather than only addressing critical issues sporadically?

I’m not looking to disparage Rive; I understand that your resources are limited, and I admire the work done so far and your contributions to open source. I’m just looking for visibility on this library so I can make informed strategic decisions.

Alternatives

Having this visibility would help the React Native community consider well-maintained alternatives, such as:

• Skottie with React Native Skia
• Lottie React Native

[evelant]

We're in the same boat. Our team greatly regrets investing in Rive due to the lack of maintenance and low quality of this library. It has cost us an incredible amount of hours and frustration. We too would like clarity about the future of this repo. If Rive does not want to properly maintain it then it should be spun off as a community only library. If it will be brought up to a reasonable quality we'd love to know when. It's the limbo state that it has been in for years now that causes so many problems.

[joaqo]

Yep, just started using rive a few months ago, was on a honeymoon stage until I had to integrate into our react native app. Honestly we're feeling a bit betrayed at this point, as the promise of create rive file -> run on all your platforms did not pan out for us.

[evelant]

@lancesnider @HayesGordon would you please provide some input here? We continue to struggle with problems due to Rive. The re-written new arch version of the library was ~1 week away ~5 months ago. I'm not trying to criticize, we just need some communication and clarity please.

[HayesGordon]

Update from Rive

You all are raising valid concerns. We hear you.

I wanted to update when we had something more concrete to share. But please know that we are actively talking about this internally and how best to proceed.

Please also keep in mind that a core part of the development of React Native rely on the development of our Android and iOS runtimes, and those rely on the development of our core C++ runtime and renderer. And over the last year there has been significant work done for the above. This is core work that had to be prioritized as it affected more people, and there is more work to be done. We're also undergoing significant rewrites to improve the stability and performance of iOS and Android (read more about Android here). This is all work that will eventually benefit React Native as well.

But we understand that none of the above addresses your immediate concerns. What we are considering right now is to get assistance from an external agency to tackle the biggest issues that the RN community is facing and to help conclude the work on the rewrite.

I'll keep you updated as soon as we have more info to share. Feel free to ping me.

[evelant]

@HayesGordon Thanks for the update. Would you be able to make the branch with the new architecture re-write available to the community? It doesn't even need to be published or could be a pre-release. You've got highly knowledgeable react native people right here in the community willing to help out but we can't without the new codebase or when PRs don't get reviewed/merged.

[christophemenager]

Thanks for the update @HayesGordon

What we are considering right now is to get assistance from an external agency to tackle the biggest issues that the RN community is facing and to help conclude the work on the rewrite.

Just suggesting @mrousay, I know he does some consulting work with margelo and could quickly build the fondations of the new package using nitro-modules (which you wanted or maybe already used for your rewrite) as he authored it.

[HayesGordon]

Thanks for the update @HayesGordon

What we are considering right now is to get assistance from an external agency to tackle the biggest issues that the RN community is facing and to help conclude the work on the rewrite.

Just suggesting @mrousay, I know he does some consulting work with margelo and could quickly build the fondations of the new package using nitro-modules (which you wanted or maybe already used for your rewrite) as he authored it.

Thanks @christophemenager, I already have a meeting scheduled with Margelo :)

[joaqo]

Thanks for the update ❤️

[evelant]

Unfortunately we've been forced to remove Rive from our app. We loved the idea of Rive, but this library has been nothing short of a disaster for us. It cost us an immense amount of time, stress, bad reviews, lost users, and ultimately lost revenue.

I'm sure it's not the intention of the Rive team but every single assurance of improvements so far has not come to pass. The library is still in a state that's unacceptable for production use with little change over the past year or more. We likely would have been better off writing our own library to wrap the android/ios sdks rather than hoping the Rive team would fix this one.

We feel frustrated and misled by Rive touting react-native as an officially supported platform when this library clearly isn't production ready and isn't getting the resources/attention needed to bring it up to acceptable quality. IMO Rive should remove react-native from their list of supported platforms or at least clearly mark react-native support as alpha or "use at your own risk".

[leemhenson]

@evelant What are you replacing it with?

[evelant]

We used react-native-reanimated to make replacements for our Rive animations. They're not quite as nice but they work.

[christophemenager]

Anyone knows if there is a way to convert a rive file to a lottie one? Many of my animations could actually be lotties as they don't use any specific rive feature.

Using Skottie makes me hope this could be a great replacement

[HayesGordon]

Updating here from Rive's side. The contract has been signed with the Margelo team to start work on Monday the 27th. We'll make a more official announcement soon, and there will likely need to be some onboarding time for them to tackle the bigger issues.

But hopefully this addresses some of the concerns that were raised in this thread, and over the upcoming weeks we will be prioritising what is the most important work for Rive React Native.

[brentvatne]

@HayesGordon - that's great to hear! feel free to reach out to brent@expo.dev if you want to discuss anything related to rive and expo. i've also sent a message to @mrousavy to margelo about this. we're here to help if there is anything needed on our end to better support rive in expo projects, and alongside expo-updates.