Snapchat Opens Valdi Framework to Developers After 8 Years of Internal Use – It’s FOSS

Snap Inc., the company behind Snapchat, has open-sourced Valdi, a cross-platform mobile UI framework. The social media company typically keeps its technology in-house, but this marks a surprising move into open source territory. While there was no dedicated announcement for this on their news portal, The New Stack were the first ones to report this; I am assuming they received a press release for this. Anyhow, let’s dive into this interesting development. Valdi is Now Open Source Valdi is now available on GitHub under the MIT license. The framework has powered Snapchat’s production features for eight years, and, with the accompanying license in place, developers can use, modify, and distribute the code freely, and there are no restrictions on commercial use. Valdi compiles TypeScript code directly into native views for Android, iOS, and macOS. It does not use web views or JavaScript bridges. The framework claims 2x faster time-to-first-render and uses 1/4 the memory compared to competitors. These benchmarks were shared during Valdi’s initial beta phase, when Snapchat first announced Valdi in August 2025 on Hacker News. Back then, the company sought beta testers and required NDAs for private repository access. The initial beta lasted three months before the public
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