djdeveloperr/nativescript-expo

This project is an example Expo app that shows how NativeScript, a framework normally used on its own to build native mobile apps, can instead be plugged into a React Native and Expo app as a TurboModule. In practice this means the app can reach directly into the full iOS SDK using TypeScript, without needing a separate native bridge library for every iOS feature it wants to use. The author explains the motivation behind this: normally, using a specific native iOS API from a React Native app means either waiting for someone to publish a wrapper library for it or writing native code yourself. By exposing NativeScript's runtime as a TurboModule, developers can call the latest iOS SDK APIs straight from TypeScript with no extra dependencies, and native components can even hot reload without recompiling the whole React Native project. The README also describes ongoing work on NativeScript's runtime, including support for running it with different JavaScript engines such as Hermes, V8, QuickJS, and JSC, and compiling it as a JSI module so React Native apps can tap into the native access that NativeScript apps have relied on for years. To demonstrate this integration, the example app includes several working iOS features built directly in TypeScript: generating and adding Apple Wallet passes, a native document scanner powered by VisionKit, a native PDF viewer built on PDFKit, native tab bar integration, and a Metal powered shine effect on the wallet pass combined with CoreMotion for gyroscope based motion effects. Getting started is straightforward: install the project's dependencies with npm install, then run it on an iOS device or simulator with npx expo run:ios. The project is licensed under MIT, so it can be freely used, modified, and redistributed, including commercially, as long as the original copyright notice is kept.