Ottrelite: Unified, Extensible Tracing Framework for React Native

Tracing React Native internals has always been possible, but never this flexible. Artur Morys-Magiera and Dominik Dolny (Senior Engineers at Callstack) introduce Ottrelite, a unified and extensible tracing framework for React Native. Ottrelite re-enables the existing Systrace JS API through Nitro Modules and provides a plugin system for plugging in any native tracing backend.

▪ Why tracing React Native internals has been difficult with prebuilt artifacts and missing plugin support

▪ How Ottrelite avoids building React Native from source while still enabling deep instrumentation

▪ Support for multiple languages: JavaScript, Kotlin/Java, Swift/Objective-C, and C++

▪ Built-in backends: Tracy, Android ATrace, and iOS os_signpost, plus the ability to bring your own

▪ Development vs. production workflows: profiling with Tracy, telemetry with OpenTelemetry and tools like Grafana, Jaeger, or Prometheus

▪ Automatic component instrumentation with a Babel plugin, plus hooks for custom tracing and metadata

Ottrelite bridges the gap between React Native DevTools and modern obser