Mobile Bridge: Making WebViews Feel Native (2025) - Shopify

This post details the creation and enhancements of Mobile Bridge, a framework to improve WebView performance, appearance, and integration in Shopify's mobile app. Key technical contributions include: 1. Performance improvements via background preloading and caching of WebViews, reducing P75 load times from 6s to 1.4s. 2. Visual improvements by disabling zoom, removing text selection, hiding unnecessary UI elements, and adapting Polaris components. 3. Enhanced integration through a two-way communication layer (@remote-ui/rpc) for page titles, actions, and navigation. Introduced TransportableView for seamless WebView movement between screens and snapshotting for back navigation. Also details native integration of Date Picker, Barcode Scanner, and 'Add to Wallet' features. Future work involves rendering Polaris components natively from web code using remote-dom.