Top 10 Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks for 2024

Cross-platform app development has benefits that play an important role in its popularity. According to a report, mobile app usage increased by 40% in 2020 and is projected to continue in the following years.

With so many devices and platforms on the market, creating apps that work with all of them is critical. Cross-platform app development has become relevant at this time.A cross-platform approach allows app developers uk to design programs on several platforms. Furthermore, as the popularity of cross-platform apps has grown, new tools and frameworks have emerged in the market.

Let’s look at the top ten best cross-platform app development frameworks, their features, and how they can best suit your user needs.

What is Cross-Platform Development?

Cross-platform app development allows developers to create interoperable software programs with several operating systems and platforms, including macOS, iOS, Windows, and Android.

While designing a cross-platform software program was time-consuming and complex due to the need to establish a backend that works with many platforms. Cross-app development has become more accessible to new methodologies and frameworks.

Top 10 Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks for 2024:

1. Ionic

Ionic is a cross-platform app framework that is built on AngularJS. It enables developers to access native platform controllers by combining top programming languages such as HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS with the Cordova wrapper.

Features:

• It includes various UI components for designing apps that support various mobile operating systems.
• Ionic, like React Native, is an open-source framework that allows developers to adapt its code structure to meet their demands, saving time and effort.
• Ionic is built on Angular.js, which makes it simple to provide HTML syntax extensions to add appealing features and components to the application.

2. React Native

React Native is an excellent solution for web app developers UK looking to create cross-platform mobile apps. Facebook created the framework, which provides a terrific method to experiment, design, and distribute fully featured mobile applications that run on iOS, Android, Windows, and other platforms.

Features:

• Reduces cost 
• Simplified debugging process 
• Advanced APIs 
• Native plugins are available
• Better performance 

3. Flutter

Flutter is an open-source, free UI software development kit produced by Google that developers use to create cross-platform apps. Flutter codes in the Dart programming language, which has many sophisticated capabilities. 

Features:

• Flutter’s hot reload capability allows developers to observe changes to the application code without recompiling it.
• It does not rely on web standards such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript because it has its rendering engine for widgets.
• Developers may create digital experiences using Google Material Design support in Flutter.

4. Xamarin

 Xamarin is also one of the most popular open-source frameworks for developing mobile applications. The Microsoft-acquired framework is built on the Net and allows you to create native Android, iOS, and Windows applications. Xamarin includes practically every tool and module required to build native applications and allows you to create rich experiences utilizing native UI components. 

Features:

• 1.4 million developer community
• Native API Access and UI Support 
• Easier API Integration 
• Cost-Effective & Faster Development Process
• Target All platforms

5. Swiftic

Create interactive and powerful native applications for iOS, Android, tvOS, and watchOS using a single code base and cutting-edge UI components. Convert your stunning app concept into a production-ready application with Swift! 

Features:

• One language for all targets 
• Live visual design 
• Architecture that can be expanded using third-party modules. 
• Video playback integration is simple.  
• Convenient data management  

6. Node.js

Node.js is another prominent open-source, cross-platform backend runtime environment based on the V8 JavaScript engine.

Node.js developers leverage its versatility to run applications on various platforms, including Linux, macOS, Unix, and Windows. This allows them to construct robust server-side and scalable networking apps, meeting diverse project requirements efficiently.

Features:

• Node.js allows for rapid code execution.
• It combines a single-threaded approach with event looping.
• Node.js APIs are asynchronous, which means they are not blocking. As a result, they go on to another API after requesting it while the notification system waits for a response from the prior API call.
• To reduce buffering, Node. Js-based cross-platform programs output data in chunks.

7. Appcelerator Titanium

Appcelerator is one of several cross-platform app development tools designed to make mobile app development more efficient and straightforward. It’s a great way to create cross-platform apps with a single code base. 

Features:

• Appcelerator comes with several tools for quick app creation. A prototype can be produced quickly and with less effort to evaluate user interactions with UI.
• It comes with ArrowDB, a schema-free data store that enables developers to create data models with little setup.
• It allows for integrating systems for continuous delivery, such as SCM solutions.

8. NativeScript

NativeScript is a fantastic free cross-platform framework based on JavaScript. NativeScript is a good solution for app developers UK searching for WORA functionality. 

Features:

• NativeScript produces appealing, accessible, and platform-native user interfaces without needing WebViews.
• NativeScript enables developers to rapidly access native Android and iOS APIs without additional native programming language knowledge.
• It is written in Angular and TypeScript. 
• NativeScript recognizes Cocoapods and AndroidArsenal segments and uses libraries to call local strategies.

9. Mobile Angular UI

Mobile Angular UI is an open-source mobile application development framework that combines the implementations of the Bootstrap and Angular frameworks. The framework provides different UI components, including overlays, switches, sidebars, navbars, scrollable regions, etc.

 Features:

• Responsive Framework 
•  Interactive Components
• Lightweight
• No jQuery dependencies
• Conversion of an online or desktop program to a mobile app is simplified.

10. PhoneGap

PhoneGap was once a proprietary framework held by Adobe. However, they have given up and open-sourced their rights to the company. The framework is primarily designed for hybrid applications, which are programs that operate in a browser on the device but are managed by an app or website in a web browser.

 Features:

PhoneGap was once a proprietary framework held by Adobe. However, they have given up and open-sourced their rights to the company. The framework is primarily designed for hybrid applications, which are programs that operate in a browser on the device but are managed by an app or website in a web browser.

 Features:

• It uses native APIs: Using PhoneGap, developers can use your mobile phone’s native APIs, such as SMS messages, camera APIs, GPS APIs, and other functionalities, without having to design them themselves. 
• It is compatible with several platforms. The fantastic thing about PhoneGap is that it supports over 40 different platforms, so you don’t have to learn a new programming language whenever you want to publish your app on another platform, such as Android or iOS. 

Conclusion

After considering all of the best options that a competent cross-platform app development company is looking for in this domain, there is nothing left to do but wait and see how these frameworks compete with each other to stay competitive and how well they fare against the new frameworks entering the market as we speak.

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