React Native 0.85 is the kind of release that should go through interaction QA, not just compile checks. A new animation backend can improve long-term capability, but animation regressions are often felt in timing, cancellation, gesture handoff, and low-end device behavior before they show up as obvious errors.
The Jest preset moving to a dedicated package is also worth treating as a tooling migration. Test setup tends to accrete small local assumptions, especially in apps with custom Babel, Metro, or monorepo wiring. That makes this release a good opportunity to clean the test bootstrap instead of patching around it.
My upgrade checklist would include:
- Gesture-heavy screens on physical Android and iOS devices.
- Shared element, keyboard, and navigation transition flows.
- Snapshot or rendering tests that depend on React Native Jest defaults.
- CI caching around Metro and test transforms.
The upside is real: React Native continues moving more platform capability into stable defaults. The cost is that release QA has to include motion as behavior, not decoration.
Official source: React Native 0.85 - New Animation Backend, New Jest Preset Package.