Flipper
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Flipper is Meta's debugging Swiss Army knife for mobile apps. It lets you inspect your React Native app's network requests, layout, databases, and logs all from a desktop app. It's DevTools but for your phone.
Real Talk
A desktop debugging platform by Meta for iOS, Android, and React Native apps. Flipper provides plugins for network inspection, layout visualization, database browsing, log viewing, and performance profiling. It connects to running apps via a local server and supports custom plugins.
When You'll Hear This
"Use Flipper to inspect the network requests — you can see exactly what the API is returning." / "Flipper's layout inspector saves hours of 'why is this view not showing up' debugging."
Related Terms
DevTools
DevTools is the built-in developer panel in every major browser (press F12 or right-click → Inspect).
Metro Bundler
Metro is React Native's module bundler — it takes all your JavaScript files, smooshes them together, and serves them to your app.
React Native
React Native lets you build iPhone and Android apps using React and JavaScript. It's like React put on a disguise and snuck into the App Store.