Can you use React Native to create a desktop application?

Solution 1:

Try Proton Native. It uses the React Native syntax for building desktop applications without Electron.

Solution 2:

There isn't any official support for desktop applications in React Native, at least as of January 2018.

There are, however, various experimental forks of React Native for desktop platforms such as react-native-windows for Univeral Windows Platform, react-native-macos for Mac and react-native-desktop for Linux. They're not developed by the main RN team, though, so your milage may vary.

As of July 2021 it unfortunately looks like the only project still being actively being maintained is [react-native-windows] (https://github.com/Microsoft/react-native-windows) the others have been deprecated or straight up abandoned.