God fucking damnit, fuck React Native. Fucking shitpile of weirdass errors, dependency fuckups, fucking weirdass xcode errors.

You need to use cacaopods when you want to use bluetooth functionality, notifications etc.

Generally how is react native? Currently using Ionic because I'm using existing angular libraries from a desktop site

It is pretty neat, the performance is so much better than Ionic. But using native parts like notifications can be such an enormous pain in the ass.

Tried React Native, instantly go back to native app.

I quite like React Native - I thinks it's definitely one of the best cross platform options for mobile atm.

Having that said, I did have noticeable performance problems on animations/transitions, and in a not so trivial app you'll most certainly need to dive into native code.

It's an abomination. Kill it with fire! Porting the app back to native.