NativeScript is a framework for building native iOS and Android apps using JavaScript and CSS. NativeScript renders UIs with the native platform’s rendering engine—no WebViews—resulting in native-like performance and UX.
NativeScript provides a best-of-both-worlds development experience. Our cross-platform JavaScript modules give you the convenience of writing iOS and Android apps from a single JavaScript codebase, while our runtimes give you the power of accessing native APIs, SDKs, and frameworks when you need them—all without needing to open Xcode or Android Studio. NativeScript was created and is supported by Telerik.
You can read more about why NativeScript may be a good fit for your next project, or check out the links below to get started.
Our Getting Started Guide is a hands-on tutorial that walks you through installing NativeScript and building a real iOS and Android application.
- NativeScript’s home page
- NativeScript’s documentation
- @NativeScript on Twitter
- NativeScript’s blog
- NativeScript’s community forum
- NativeScript on Stack Overflow
The NativeScript framework is made up a number of components, all of which are open source and on GitHub. Here are the major ones:
- The current repo contains the code of the NativeScript cross-platform modules, which abstract iOS and Android APIs into JavaScript APIs—e.g.
camera.takePicture(). The modules are written in TypeScript. - The iOS Runtime repo contains the code that hosts the iOS app, and allows the JavaScript code of your application to be executed on an iOS device. The iOS runtime is written in a fun mix of C++, Objective-C, and more.
- The Android Runtime repo contains the code that hosts the Android app, and allows that JavaScript code of your application to be executed on an Android device. The Android runtime is written an even more fun mix of C++ and Java.
- The NativeScript CLI repo contains the command-line interface for creating an application using the NativeScript framework. The CLI is written in TypeScript.
- The NativeScript Docs repo contain the NativeScript framework documentation which is available on http://docs.nativescript.org/. The docs are written in Markdown.
In addition to the code that makes up the NativeScript framework itself, we also provide a number of open-source sample apps that you can reference while building your NativeScript application.
We love PRs, and accept them for all of our repositories—even docs! Please follow our contribution guide if you want to become part of the project.
We are working together with the Google Angular JS team to make Angular 2.0 work on top of NativeScript. To check our progress please see the following links:
- NativeScript Angular 2.0 plugin - This plugin is the only thing you need to install in order to enable Angular 2.0 in NativeScript.
- TodoMVC sample - The classic TodoMVC sample implemented with NativeScript and Angular 2.0.