Native UI and multiplatform Compose with Redwood

Cash App just open-sourced Redwood, their answer to the multiplatform UI problem. Unlike other solutions, it renders with native UI toolkits instead of recreating them.

Jake Wharton explains how Cash App built Redwood to share UI logic across Android, iOS, and web while keeping platform-native rendering. The framework uses Kotlin and Compose to generate composables that interface with each platform's native components.

Key Takeaways

• Redwood renders using native UI toolkits, not cross-platform abstractions
• Schema-based approach generates composables and platform-specific widget interfaces automatically
• Treehouse module enables dynamic runtime updates via Zipline between app releases
• Designed for incremental adoption in existing apps, not all-or-nothing migration
• Version 0.5 beta ensures backward compatibility across the updatable bridge

The schema-to-composable generation approach could change how teams with design systems think about cross-platform UI architecture.