Reactotron

Reactotron is an open-source desktop app from Infinite Red that connects to your React Native app while it runs in development and shows a timeline of what is happening inside it. It complements, rather than replaces, React Native DevTools.

Its strengths are app-level insight that a general debugger does not give you out of the box:

• A timeline of logs, network requests and responses, and async events.
• State inspection and subscriptions for Redux and MobX-State-Tree, including dispatching actions and restoring snapshots.
• A view of AsyncStorage contents.
• Custom commands: buttons in the desktop app that run code in your app, such as "reset onboarding" or "log in as test user".

Unlike a debugger, Reactotron is set up in code with the reactotron-react-native package and a small config file, imported only in development:

if (__DEV__) {
  require('./ReactotronConfig');
}

That guard matters. The most common mistake is importing the config unconditionally, which ships the client in production builds where it tries to reach a desktop that is not there.

Other practical gotchas:

• On a physical Android device the app cannot reach localhost on your computer. Forward the port with adb reverse tcp:9090 tcp:9090, or point the client at your machine’s IP address.
• Network logging works by intercepting the app’s requests, so the configuration order relative to your HTTP client setup can matter.
• Reactotron shows what your code reports. It does not set breakpoints or inspect native views.

Teams that relied on Flipper for state and network plugins often move to Reactotron for that part of the workflow.