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software-mansion/radon-ide
VSCode/Cursor extension that turns your editor into a full featured IDE for React Native and Expo.
Radon IDE is a paid VSCode/Cursor extension from Software Mansion that embeds a simulator preview directly in your editor for React Native and Expo development. It replaces the usual metro + separate simulator workflow with an integrated panel, element inspector, debugger, and logging console. The target user is a React Native developer frustrated with context-switching between their editor, terminal, and simulator.
The element inspector with component hierarchy is genuinely useful — clicking a UI element in the simulator and jumping directly to its source is the kind of thing that saves hours across a project. The integrated debugger with source maps working out of the box is something that has historically been painful to set up in RN. Software Mansion maintains several foundational RN libraries (Reanimated, Gesture Handler) so the compatibility story is credible — these are people who know the internals. Screen recording and replay built into the IDE is a nice touch for bug reporting.
This is a closed-source commercial product; the GitHub repo is issue tracking only, so you're evaluating marketing materials, not code. The free tier is a trial, not a real free plan — you're buying a license or you're evaluating. With 1703 stars and only 81 forks (and no actual source to fork), the community surface is thin. Compatibility with non-standard setups, custom native modules, or monorepos is the kind of thing that breaks these tools and the docs acknowledge compatibility caveats without being specific.