Skia
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Skia is the 2D graphics engine that powers Chrome, Android, and Flutter. In React Native (via react-native-skia), it lets you draw anything — custom charts, shaders, image filters — with GPU acceleration. It's like giving React Native a professional art studio.
Real Talk
An open-source 2D graphics library developed by Google, used as the rendering engine for Chrome, Android, Flutter, and many other platforms. React Native Skia brings this engine to React Native, enabling custom drawing, shader effects, image processing, and GPU-accelerated rendering with a declarative React API.
When You'll Hear This
"We use react-native-skia for custom charts because the SVG libraries were too slow." / "Skia shaders let you create effects that would be impossible with normal React Native views."
Related Terms
Flutter
Flutter is Google's way of saying 'write once, run everywhere' and actually meaning it.
GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)
A GPU was originally built for rendering graphics in games, but turns out it's also perfect for AI.
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.