The story in brief
Swiggy, an on-demand convenience platform in India, runs three apps: Swiggy Food, Instamart for groceries and Dineout for restaurant bookings. Swiggy Food was always native. Instamart and Dineout started as hybrid experiences, and in early 2024, as those businesses grew, the team decided to move them to native apps built with Swift and SwiftUI. Apple’s article is based on interviews with the iOS team.
What stood out
1. They named the problems first
Before moving, the team listed what hurt: slow page loads, hangs on long product lists, memory pressure and inconsistent animations on Instamart, and rich restaurant images and video held back on Dineout. A migration with named problems has a way to tell whether it worked.
2. They did not rewrite everything
They started with the home and search screens of Instamart and Dineout, where most customer interactions happen, rather than a full rewrite, and released the first native screens within weeks. It is the order we recommend too: the screens people use most, first.
3. Feature work did not stop
New features kept coming during the move, which the team says needed clear ownership and careful coordination between the hybrid and native code. Plan for two systems living side by side for a while.
4. They stopped copying the old interface
The first native screens replicated the hybrid interface. The team then switched to native design patterns with small adjustments, which they say improved reuse and sped up development. Rebuilding the old screens pixel for pixel throws away much of what going native is for.
5. Native opened up features, not just speed
Beyond faster loading and smoother scrolling, most noticeable on older devices, the team added text recognition for menu search in Dineout, grocery list scanning in Instamart, and Apple Intelligence features that summarise and compare items.
On results
The article gives no figures. The team describes improvements in engagement, completion rates and app ratings, and engineer Shashwat KN says: “We saw a meaningful uptick in conversion and a reduction in bounce rates.” That is a team describing its own results, as Apple reports them. Yours will depend on where your app is slow today.
What we would take from it
If your app runs on React Native, Flutter or a web view and the problems on Swiggy’s list sound familiar, the same approach applies: measure the screens that matter, move them first, keep releasing, and design for iOS rather than copying the old screens. That is how we approach a React Native to Swift migration, and part of why we build only in Swift.
Source: Apple Developer, “The impact was the biggest surprise”: Swiggy’s transition to native pays off, 1 September 2026.
Related: React Native to Swift migration · Swift vs Flutter · Why we only build in Swift