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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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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

NativeScript has proven to be an invaluable tool for developers across various industries. For a fitness startup, NativeScript enabled …
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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…

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  • 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 and Ratings

(18)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

NativeScript has proven to be an invaluable tool for developers across various industries. For a fitness startup, NativeScript enabled them to launch their app in just six months, providing a fast and efficient solution for their mobile development needs. Another company in the e-learning education industry is testing NativeScript as a potential alternative to their current app built on Ionic v1, with the goal of achieving an offline-first experience and improved performance.

Customers in the customer service industry have found NativeScript to be particularly useful due to its compatibility with the Angular web framework. This has allowed them to implement mobile and web-based cross-platform applications seamlessly, leveraging their existing knowledge and skills. Additionally, NativeScript's access to system APIs and seamless integration with third-party libraries has empowered developers to have full control over platform-specific functionalities, enabling them to build robust and feature-rich applications.

Countless developers have also turned to NativeScript for its ability to reuse existing frameworks and achieve native performance. It has been successfully used by consulting companies looking for a mobile app development platform that offers native performance, native UI generation, and ease of cross-platform development. These companies have praised NativeScript for allowing them to leverage their existing skills in Angular, TypeScript, and CSS, resulting in faster development cycles and cost savings.

Notably, NativeScript's versatility has made it an excellent fit for organizations that need to develop mobile applications for different platforms. By avoiding the need for separate codebases, they can save significant time and effort while still achieving native performance on both iOS and Android. This has made NativeScript a go-to choice for many developers working on projects at various stages of development.

Overall, NativeScript has garnered positive feedback from its users who appreciate its compatibility with modern web frameworks like Angular, its access to system APIs, and its ability to achieve native performance while maintaining cross-platform capabilities. It is clear that NativeScript offers a powerful solution for mobile app development needs across diverse industries.

Extensive repository of plugins: Many users appreciate the extensive repository of plugins available in NativeScript, which allows them to enhance their development speed. This feature has been praised by numerous reviewers as it enables developers to quickly add functionality to their apps without having to build everything from scratch.

Flexibility of architectural choices: The flexibility of NativeScript's four architectural choices - JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, and Vue - is highly valued by users. This flexibility has been mentioned by a significant number of reviewers who appreciate being able to choose the framework they are most comfortable with and easily transition from prototype to final product.

Native API access and performance: The fact that NativeScript offers 100-day zero Native API access is seen as a major advantage by many users. Multiple reviewers mention this feature as it allows them to leverage the full power of native UI and achieve better performance compared to other frameworks like Ionic or PhoneGap. This capability gives developers more flexibility and control over their app's performance.

Lack of ready-made UI collections: Several users have expressed frustration with the absence of ready-made UI collections in NativeScript. This means that users have to build their applications using default UI elements and then manually style them, which can be time-consuming and require additional effort. Users feel that this limitation hampers the ease and convenience of designing user interfaces for their applications.

Default UI elements not intuitive or user-friendly: Some users have found NativeScript's default UI elements to be less intuitive or user-friendly than they would prefer. This has made it more challenging for them to quickly and efficiently create applications. They believe that a more intuitive interface would greatly enhance the development process.

Lack of built-in support for customizing UI elements: Another concern raised by users is the lack of built-in support or guidance for customizing UI elements in NativeScript. Users feel that they could benefit from more assistance or resources in this area, as it would make customization easier and faster. They believe that having readily available options for customizing UI elements would greatly improve their experience with the software.

Users have provided several recommendations for Native Script based on their experiences. Based on the feedback, the following are the three most common recommendations:

  1. It is advisable to do a few tutorials and check if the desired functionality is supported through plugins or if the user is willing to create them. This implies that there may be cases where certain features are missing in the software, and users should be prepared to address this by exploring plugins or creating their own.

  2. Users recommend trying Native Script to learn something new and explore interesting features. This suggests that Native Script offers a unique learning experience for those interested in expanding their skills and discovering new capabilities.

  3. However, users do not recommend using Native Script for production-ready applications. While the software has its merits, it may not be suitable for developing applications intended for deployment in a live production environment.

These recommendations highlight the importance of familiarizing oneself with Native Script's capabilities through tutorials, being open to exploring plugins or creating custom functionality, and considering the software's limitations when deciding whether it is appropriate for specific use cases.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-13 of 13)
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Balázs Kiss | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
NativeScript was indeed a better experience at first than Ionic. But the real game-changer in 2022 for cross-platform applications is Flutter now. We changed to it shorty after NativeScript, as it is much more stable, more widely supported, has a ton of extra features, and does not rely on JavaScript and Android knowledge as much as NativeScript.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
First and foremost, the codebase on which the project application was developed in NativeScript on 90% can be shared with React Native framework. Moreover, the documentation of the framework is extensive in a manner to allow developers the easy low-level entrance for the project development. Also, NativeScript allows to implement it's own QA testing workflow, which significantly impacts on the final quality of the product to be delivered.
Eric Bewley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I have use AngularJS and Angular for many years, and when it came time to build a mobile app, I was asked to use Android Studio. I did not have any trouble in developing apps separately with these two technologies. By trying to combine web app development and Android app development via NativeScript, I find that NativeScript is still quite immature in its development, and strongly recommend that anyone considering the use of NativeScript, do so after performing several proof-of-concept of their existing needs.
Tiago Alves | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have several hybrid alternatives like Cordova + jQuery Mobile and ionic (which uses Cordova and angular). These alternatives always let you down in the long run because the performance and "feel" is never comparable to a true native app. Especially when the app's complexity scales to a considerable size. It is also hard to get to native functionality like storage or a persistent database.

I also tested Weex, a Vue.js-native framework, but is it just not very reliable, with poor tools and very poor community. NativeScript's community is awesome!
Evan Payne | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ionic
Ionic is an excellent Angular-based framework for mobile, and it does give a lot of access to the native device api's. However, the technology is based on Cordova, which means the apps being built are just webviews, with html, css and JS all running on the UI thread, and potentially creating very slow experiences for users. NativeScript is a truly native solution, and so provides a faster user experience.

ReactNative
We evaluate ReactNative, and found it much the same as NativeScript. The main difference is that your JS is all written with React, while NativeScript lets you choose between normal JS, Angular, and Vue. For our team, Angular was the most appropriate choice.
Mike Branstein | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We have previously evaluated Xamarin, and the time it took us to get started, install all of the software, license it, learn Xamarin, and create a app that runs and debugs on connected mobile devices was painful. With NativeScript and the Playground, we're able to get started fast - in less than 5 minutes, and be running a mobile app on multiple connected devices. Furthermore, we could make changes and see live changes on the mobile apps.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've looked into and worked with multiple frame works such as Phonegap/Cordova, Ionic, and React Native. While they all allowed developers to create multi-platform applications easily, with different degrees of performance, I found them all to fall short in once you reached a point where the frame work didn't do exactly what you needed it too. At that point then you have to write Objective-C or Java to accomplish your goals and on top of that learn how to write that code so it is accessible for the frame work your are using. This would have made most of the applications I've worked one extremely more daunting because unless your app is very simplistic you are more than likely going to encounter a situation where the framework doesn't meet all your needs. By being able to access native API's directly from JavaScript/TypeScript you are able to bypass this inevitable headache.
Shiva Prasad K | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Unlike its competitors, NativeScript offers its users 4 architectural choices. It shines in the area of offering 100% day zero Native API access. The development experience is great and feels like you are home, if you are a web developer coming from Angular or Vue background, or even vanilla JS.
Nic Raboy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I was once a user of Ionic Framework which operates on Apache Cordova. At the time, Ionic was the obvious choice because it was lightyears ahead of the other cross platform frameworks. However, because Ionic Framework and Apache Cordova require a WebView component to function, performance was unpredictable on actual devices, more specifically Android which has a lot of hardware fragmentation. Being that NativeScript doesn't use a WebView, performance was reliable on all possible devices with no extra penalty on development.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Ionic and Flutter
Ionic is based on an embedded WebView running an app looking website in the background. It has been around for a couple years, but it does not compare well to real native applications. In most cases the UI just doesn't have the feel of a real native app, and performance is usually a problem. Flutter is the new kid in the block, while it has some great potential, there are still many things it has to figure out before it becomes a viable option, at least in our organization. Just to name a few things that made us choose NativeScript over Flutter, i'd start off with project maturity. NativeScript has had a stable release for a few years now and has been improving constantly. Flutter has become stable very recently and the surrounding ecosystem is still in it's early stages. One of the main downsides of Flutter is that the UI is rendered using OpenGL, so we can't reuse existing UI elements for a given platform, instead everything has to be recreated, which might not always be a worthwhile time investment.
Brad Martin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The direct native API access without having to write any Java or ObjC was the ultimate decision for us. We can drop in a native Android/Ios library and instantly code against that SDK without any special work. Whereas with Ionic or RN, you have to write some Java/ObjC (or Swift) and "bridge" your way to those native APIs. There are advantages in doing this but the time factor in not having to know Java or write any was a win for us and our clients.
victor pease solano | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ionic and Apache Cordova are hybrid tools, both based on Webview which is ok for mobile offline data apps but for high-performance enterprise apps that is the limit. NativeScript can go where the number of rules and processing required force us to gain access to the native interface. While development with all these tools is fast, going for a hybrid is faster but sacrifices performance. With a little more effort you can have the same with NativeScript gaining that performance that you looking for
Dave Coffin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • phonegap, reactnative, angular and vuejs
NativeScript is superior in every way:
Vibrant community - there is an open Slack channel where you can get advice and talk to other nativescript developers
Active development team - The NativeScript development team reaches out to their user base consistently for feature requests and to take the pulse of their community
Tooling - The team is constantly updating their tooling with improved CLI and even UX implementations of CLI operations for beginners.
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