React Native mobile editor

The Gutenberg repository includes the source for the React Native based editor for mobile.

Project status

The React Native mobile editor is currently unmaintained on trunk and is known to be broken following the upgrade to React 19 (#61521). React 19 is not compatible with the current Gutenberg Mobile setup, and there is little to no active work on Gutenberg Mobile while the WP Mobile project explores paths forward for the block editor in the mobile apps. See the tracking issue (#71336) for background.

If a fix is required for the existing Gutenberg Mobile build, branch from the most recent React Native release — tag rnmobile/1.121.0 at commit e63b8b8 (see #63744) — and cut a minor release from there. New work targeting trunk to restore React Native compatibility should be coordinated with the WP Mobile team beforehand.

Mind the mobile

Contributors need to ensure that they update any affected native mobile files during code refactorings because we cannot yet rely on automated tooling to do this for us. For example, renaming a function or a prop should also be performed in the native modules too, otherwise, the mobile client will break. We have added some mobile specific CI tests as safeguards in place in PRs, but we’re still far from done. Please bear with us and thank you in advance. ❤️🙇‍

Native mobile specific files

The majority of the code shared with native mobile is in the very same JavaScript module and SASS style files. In the cases where the code paths need to diverge, a .native.js or .native.scss variant of the file is created. In some cases, platform specific files can be also found for Android (.android.js) or iOS (.ios.js).

Running Gutenberg Mobile on Android and iOS

For instructions on how to run the Gutenberg Mobile Demo App on Android or iOS, see Getting Started for the React Native based Mobile Gutenberg

Also, the mobile client is packaged and released via the official WordPress apps. Even though the build pipeline is slightly different then the mobile demo apps and lives in its own repo for now (here’s the native mobile repo), the source code itself is taken directly from this repo and the “web” side codepaths.

Native mobile E2E tests in Continuous Integration

If you encounter a failed Android/iOS test on your pull request, we recommend the following steps:

1. Re-running the failed GitHub Action job (guide for how to re-run) – This should fix failed tests the majority of the time.
2. You can check if the test is failing locally by following the steps to run the E2E test on your machine from the E2E testing documentation.
3. In addition to reading the logs from the E2E test, you can download a video recording from the Artifacts section of the GitHub job that may have additional useful information.
4. Check if any changes in your PR would require corresponding changes to .native.js versions of files.
5. Lastly, if you’re stuck on a failing mobile test, feel free to reach out to contributors on Slack in the #mobile or #core-editor chats in the WordPress Core Slack, free to join.

Debugging the native mobile unit tests

Follow the instructions in Native mobile testing to locally debug the native mobile unit tests when needed.

Internationalization (i18n)

Further information about this topic can be found in the React Native Internationalization Guide.