// the take
A React Native module that bundles a real compiled Node.js binary (v7.1.0, V8-based) and runs it as an Android background service alongside your RN app, letting you use actual Node APIs — http servers, streams, fs — instead of reimplementing them in JS. For devs who need genuine Node.js semantics on Android, built by the same author as the Scuttlebutt mobile stack (mmmmm, react-native-scuttlebot) to support that use case.
Runs an unmodified Node binary rather than a polyfill, so npm packages that rely on real Node behavior (streams, fs, net) actually work instead of half-working. The bundling command compresses your background app into an Android raw resource and patches AndroidManifest.xml automatically, which is a nontrivial build step to have solved for you. Logcat tags (RNNodeThread, RNNodeService) give you a real debugging path into the background process.
The README's first line is DEPRECATED — the author redirects everyone to Node.js Mobile, and there's been no commit since March 2019. Android-only; iOS is explicitly impossible with this approach because V8 JIT violates Apple's App Store policy, so it only solves half the problem. Native bindings in dependencies aren't supported unless someone's cross-compiled them for Android ARM, which rules out a lot of real npm packages despite the pitch of 'everything Node can do.' Shipping a prebuilt Node binary you didn't compile yourself is a supply-chain trust issue the README itself flags without resolving.
We read the README, the directory tree and a key source file in October 2026. Nobody pays to be listed. How we judge →