Render beautiful native apps with TypeScript and stay informed on releases, community spotlights, and guidance from the team keeping NativeScript sharp.
Creating a native iOS messaging UI with a keyboard-docked input bar is common, but matching the polish of Apple's Messages app takes more than pinning a view to the bottom. In this guide, we'll build a production-ready inputAccessoryView setup with smooth keyboard animations, correct scrolling behavior, and pixel-perfect layout.
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noReuse flag to any path you don't want to reuse, while keeping it for all the other paths.Do you know, which modules you should import everywhere and which only once?
Do you know what happens every time you add NativeScriptModule to each of your @NgModule?
In this article, you will learn how to use Playground and what it could be used for.
Angular 4 brings smaller application packages and faster runtime speeds. Let’s look at how you can update your NativeScript apps to take advantage of these optimizations.
Often, the application developer would like the application user to choose from a defined set of choices. For example, the choices may be a list of origin airports serviced by an airplane company, or possibly a list of your friends in a social app context. In this case, the AutoCompleteTextView for NativeScript will be your best friend. Let’s dive in a little deeper into the useful features that the control provides.
So let's fix this! I will give you an overview of how the native apps protect the code and data and how NativeScript does this.
With 360+ plugins for NativeScript it is clear that the community is now producing much more code than the core team. This is a huge milestone for every open source project. Thank you everyone for all the contributions and plugin work. Below you will see some major highlights of the core framework that were done by the community.
For those of you who could not manage to come, we hope to see you next time!
Now we have a framework that does this for us. When you combine Angular 2 with NativeScript you have a complete story that allows you to share code that runs NATIVELY on the target platforms - web and mobile. Support for desktop is planned for NativeScript as well.
360+ plugins, 8k+ GitHub stars, 20k+ followers on twitter, 250,000+ npm downloads, loved by the Angular community (discussion happening right now to rename NativeScript to Angular Native 😃), iOS10, FlexBox, Android 7, WebStom, VS Code, TypeScript Security, LiveEdit - this is what NativeScript 2.3 is.
Please help us and the community experts serve you better by filling out the survey.
NativeScript team is also pleased to announce our compatible NativeScript SDK integrated with the official Angular 2 bits today!
To make you more productive and to get onboard faster we are releasing 60+ code samples, entirely according to the native UX guidelines, documented, tested and most important entirely open source and contribution friendly!
If I have to mention just two highlights in this release these will be 1) performance improvements in Android (both load time and runtime performance) and 2) much faster and stable LiveSync (HotReload) functionality as part of your development process.
Full integration with VS Code editor and debugging for iOS/Android on Mac and Windows.
First preview of the Windows Runtime for NativeScript
Angular 2 SDK - Alpha release we
Before taking a closer look at everything we are shipping today, we have an exciting news to share - we just opened a public NativeScript Slack channel! To join the discussions - join the NativeScript Slack channel.
The upcoming ES7 language edition has the async/await feature which makes the UI and networking code a breeze to write and support. I was very eager to experiment with async code in a NativeScript app, and decided to try it by implementing a simple app. I decided to mirror the cuteness sample. But my project was going for something more awesome, and that's why it follows /r/hardcoreaww sub-reddit instead.
The popular mobile platforms, however, are two - iOS and Android. So, it would be fair if I cover Android as well. Moreover, further in this article as things get a more interesting and we are close to having a cross-platform AdMob usage, I will show you what’s the recommended way of separating and isolating the native API calls in a NativeScript project. So, let’s begin.
To answer these questions, it is useful to know the life cycle of Node.js. Please, take a minute to check the project wiki which explains it in a single graphic. With it in mind, the NativeScript team decided to support the LTS branches and, if possible, the "current stable" branch.
So why is this a big deal and why it is a best practice to use a font instead of an image file to display an icon?
Today, we will talk about mobile ads and how you can enable them in your NativeScript application using the Google AdMob service and SDKs. This article will focus on iOS and in the next part we will cover the Android platform.
NativeScript 1.4 is here. Please read the upgrade instructions.
What sets this release apart from the previous ones is that it reflects more than ever the way we think about the product. Once we deliver a certain set of functionality, we focus on perfecting the existing framework. You will not see new features baked into the latest version. Instead we polished many functionalities in response to users feedback. This is the result of working with a lot of developers and helping them deliver apps to their clients. Listening and responding to real developer feedback was always a core value for Telerik as a company and I’m sure you will be happy to work with this latest version of NativeScript. NativeScript is now more stable, more polished and battle tested framework. You can use NativeScript 1.4 in your production environment for building applications.
NativeScript 1.3 introduces two significant improvements to your development workflow for targeting iOS and Android:
Integration with CocoaPods for iOS development
Switch to Gradle for developing {N} projects when targeting Android
In this blog post, I’ll be covering our switch to Gradle when targeting Android and how to update your development environment to support this change.
NativeScript 1.3 is now officially available for download! If you have an app using 1.2 or an older version please read the upgrade instructions.
With this release we added more stability, more speed and several major features to NativeScript. NativeScript framework is now more mature and we are sure that NativeScript is your best bet for your mobile strategy. To be inline with the latest announcements from Apple,we do also support tvOS, and we would like to thank the Apple team for including all the tech we needed as a part of tvOS! A blog post is coming next week on the #tvOS topic.
Telerik Analytics allows you to get insight into:

Since iOS 8, Apple has made various aspects of the iOS available for 3rd-party developers to plug into. Those include plugging your own custom keyboard for your apps, or creating a widget for the iOS notification center.
Today, we will go through the steps needed to create a Today widget in the iOS notification center, but since we will be using the NativeScript framework to do so, it will be all in JavaScript, rather than in Swift/Objective-C.



Yes - the meme above sums it all. You asked a lot about a cross-platform native SideDrawer component and I’m happy that we just delivered it with the massive 1,2 release several weeks ago.
In this blog post I will share a simple example, created by one of the senior developers in the team Alex, which was inspired by an animated GIF in a tweet:
So we decided to dogfood our own animations and to see how easy it will be implement this in NativeScript in a cross-platform way. It turned out to be quite easy - just a few lines of code.
It was a great pleasure for us to see so many people joining the webinar in August. The feedback we've got is great and I think we will be doing another webinar on NativeScript soon :).
For those that missed the webinar - you can watch the full recording here (soon it will be on YouTube).
Below I'm listing the most interesting questions that were asked during the webinar. If you have any other questions please write them in the form below and they will get answered by us.
Q: Can we use the same code base for both Visual Studio and CLI development?
Yes. AppBuilder and CLI tooling are using the same project files, so you are basically using the same thing.
Q: Is a text-editor component coming in 1.3?
There is a text input for single line and text input for multi-line texts, but nothing else is planned. I guess you are asking for a rich-text editor - this is not in the roadmap for the moment. You can reuse the rich text editors that are available for native iOS and Android platforms.
Q: Is there any plan to support Windows 10 devices?
Yes. The plan is actually to skip WP8, and to support directly the Windows 10 devices. This means that you will be able to create windows desktop apps with NativeScript.
Q: What animations are you planning to support?
We support all the basic animations - size, color, opacity and location. Combining all these you can create all the animations you need. The animations are already part of the master branch in Github so you can play with them. Please follow the links here. If you don’t know how to use the latest source code of NativeScript, please follow this documentation article.
Q: Will the samples from today be available
Yes - all the samples are available here - www.nativescript.org/samples
Q: Will Win Phone ever be supported?
As I mentioned above - we will directly support Windows 10 devices.
Q: I understand support for CocoaPods is coming. Will there be something similar for Android, like "Android Arsenal" or "jCenter"?
Yes. We will implement the CocoaPods support as a general third party package repo, so in the future you will be able to use other library repositories. For Android specifically we are also working to enable gradle builds, which will give you even more flexibility to use the latest and greatest libraries coming from Google and compatible with the Android Studio AAR format.
Q: Will the Native UI for NativeScript library be added to the platform subscription offerings at a particular level as the native for ios/android are?
Yes. It will be part of the Telerik Platform subscription plans.
Q: Has Unit Testing been addressed? What testing framework does NativeScript support? Thank you.
You can use any JavaScript unit testing framework. We are currently prototyping an additional level of support. You can check our progress here: https://github.com/NativeScript/karma-nativescript-launcher
Q: But LiveSync is not available for all versions?
As of 1.2 release LiveSync is available for all NativeScript tooling - both the CLI and AppBuilder.
Q: on my experience LiveSync requires to restart the debug session
Yes - this is currently a limitation that we are working to remove in the future versions.
Q: AppInspector - is that in place of FireBug type Web Browser Developer tool?
Yes. You can read more about NativeScript App Inspector here.
Q: Are there any plans to provide functionality equivalent to HTML5 canvas or WebGL for NativeScript?
Yes. We plan to enable Canvas APIs. This is one of the most requested features from the customers, so it is in the roadmap. Please read more here.
Q: What strategy will be used for offline database with Native script on Windows 10?
Yes. We have an internal spike using sqlite. This will give you one cross-platform way to store the date in iOS, Android and Windows. Also remember that you will be able to use any existing native library for this.
Q: any idea what the angularjs 2.0 timeline is???
This is a good question for the Angular team. We plan to support everything from their current offering in September-October timeframe. Please follow our progress with this native mobile app written in Angular 2.0 and NativeScript.
Q: Is telerik ui part of nativescript open source license?
No, Telerik UI for NativeScript is a commercial product. It will however contain free components like SideDrawer which will be available to everyone. Please read more in the announcement blog post of the suite.
Q: Will the Data Form allow custom display behaviour? ie. If Field 1 response = "true" then show Field 2
Yes we will support the so called “editor relations”. Please find more info here.
Q: when you say it will provide native performance, how much overhead is there calling the native component from nativescript?
There is a minimal overhead. The component is instantiated from the native OS and after the initialization everything is handled by the native OS. Of course it vary from component to component. Some components need to be "fed" with data and if this data is coming from the JavaScript layer, then you may pay some penalty from the data marshaling between JS to Native. But you can of course skip this. For example the ListView that is coming as part of Telerik UI for NativeScript can fetch and manipulate the data entirely on the native stack, so there is no overhead at all.
It is a good topic to explain this in a separate blog post which we are currently preparing. We will also be able to share much more numbers.
I believe that the real metric is the user satisfaction, so my advice is to build your scenario, optimize it and check if there is any overhead. I believe you will be pleased with what you will see. Of course as everything in mobile (even with pure native app) you will have to think about how to implement the app in the most optimal way to reduce any overhead.
Q: What version of the android sdk do I need? Can I always use the latest?
Yes - you can always use the latest version. This is part of our 0-day support for new native operating systems.
Q: When are gonna be able to play around with the Calendar control?
We can send you an internal version of this immediately. Please who asked this question or anyone else interested open an issue and we will follow-up with you.
Q: Can you expand on the free nature of the SideBar and Chart components? Is the library a free trial and eventually will be a paid version? This is a bit confusing.
Let me try to explain. Currently this is a preview version of the component suite. It is still not official. Once it is official - at the end of September - it will contain both free and paid components. SideDrawer will always be free. The other components will be paid. In order to be safe and be sure that you will be satisfied with the component suite we are offering a 30-day fully functional trial period. Which means that you can download all the bits, play with them, contact us for support entirely for free for 30 days. If after that you decide that these components will be useful for you can buy a 1-year support package and use the components any way you want. More info on this can be found on the website. If you have any additional questions please do not hesitate to ask in the form below.
Q: The text-to-speech module is great! Is there or will there be a speech-to-text module as well?
This is probably a good idea for the community plugin.
Q: is is possible to use the beta of 1.3?
Yes the entire code is available on GitHub. Please read this article to understand how you can use the latest NativeScript source code.
Q: Great idea to add the UI components! I believe a generous set of UI components is the only way for NativeScript to compete with the heavily-pushed React Native and the increasingly popular Hosted Web App platform, in addition to PhoneGap.
Thank you for this feedback! We will be sure to adjust the pricing of these components. Probably to reduce the price we can split the suite into several smaller packages so that you can pay for only what you need. Please leave feedback on this below. More info to come in the autumn.
Q: How can you use livesync without restarting the debug?
This is currently a limitation which we will try to resolve in the future.
Q: Do the npm modules work the same from VS?
VS support is part of the AppBuilder environment. AppBuilder environment is a little bit behind at the moment, and you will be able to use the npm modules, but with 1.1 version of NativeScript. This will be fixed very soon (in a matter of a month or so) and we will have the 1.2 and the future latest {N} releases available in our cloud environment.
Q: Can you use livesync after adding new files, such as images or new node modules. Or would I have to restart LiveSync
Yes - there was a bug with 1.2 release regarding this functionality, but this is fixed in 1.2.2 version (coming this week) and you will be able to use new files and sync on demand.
Q: Have ALL the sample applications been updated to v1.2?
Yes - ALL the samples listed here - www.nativescript.org/samples are updated to 1.2.
Q: Hey guys, does telerik recommend a particular approach for storing offline data in a local database? (In the past I have used SQLite, but TJ just mentioned that some browser API's are not available in NativeScript)
Yes we have - you can look at our Telerik Platform SDK which enables you to very easily store data in the local DB and to sync with the cloud service. The other option would be to use any native library for this. Like Firebase.
Q: Are you going to release your own SQLite plugin
No at the moment. There is a community one created and we will work with the owner to help him with any fixes. Please log an issue if there is a problem with this plugin.
We are also working with Firebase to support it in NativeScript.
Q: Any plans for a NativeScript router that ties in with iOS deep links?
Yes - this is part of this issue - we need to enable particular AppDelegate events. After that you can navigate to the page deep into the application. This is already available in the master branch and it is coming with 1.3.
One of the frequently asked questions is if it is possible to use your JavaScript skills with NativeScript and implement an app for wearable devices. The answer to this is Yes you can and in this blog post we will show you how to build an app that runs on the Android Wear devices.
The NativeScript framework already provides a fairly comprehensive set of standard UI controls that you need to build an app. But what if you want to build an app with the NativeScript framework using a 3rd-party library? We’ve got you covered. With the NativeScript framework you can effortlessly take a native iOS or Android library and start using it with JavaScript. As an example, let’s look at how to build a simple Seismograph app with the NativeScript framework and Telerik Chart for iOS. Here’s what the final result looks like:

This is a guest blog post by Miroslav Nedyalkov (@miro_nedyalkov) from our London-based partner Officernd (@officernd).
Data visualization is key component of every modern mobile app. Floorplans are no exception. With good floorplanning platform you could easily make your app stand out. For example you may:

The last NativeScript webinar had a record-setting number of attendees. As such, we also had a record-setting 1000+ questions asked during the webinar!! Now, as you can guess we could not answer 1000+ questions in a couple of minutes at the end of the webinar.
So, we read all 1000+ questions post-webinar and select a handful of them to be answer in this blog post. After reading the questions, I believe many of them will be beneficial to the entire NativeScript community and not just the individual that posted the question during the live webinar.
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