Announcing the framework's long-awaited move into mobile at Next.js Conf on Thursday, Vercel revealed that developers can now compile any React component into an iOS or Android app by adding the "use native" directive to the top of the file, where it will sit alongside "use client," "use server," "use cache," and "use please work," the platform's most widely adopted directive.
"Native is simply another rendering environment, like the client, the server, the edge, and the other edge," said Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, standing in front of a slide that read "Zero Config." "We've erased the boundary between web and mobile. Our engineers are still working to determine where it went."
According to the updated documentation, a component marked both "use client" and "use native" will render on the server, while one marked "use server" and "use native" ships to the App Store as a 400MB Node.js binary. Developers unsure which applies are directed to a 14-step flowchart, which itself requires "use client."
Internal telemetry shows "use please work" now appears in 91% of production Next.js codebases, often stacked three or four times at the top of a single file. A Vercel spokesperson confirmed that stacking the directive has no effect, "but we understand."
