What is the difference between Hot Reloading and Live Reloading in React Native?

Live reloading reloads or refreshes the entire app when a file changes. For example, if you were four links deep into your navigation and saved a change, live reloading would restart the app and load the app back to the initial route.

Hot reloading only refreshes the files that were changed without losing the state of the app. For example, if you were four links deep into your navigation and saved a change to some styling, the state would not change, but the new styles would appear on the page without having to navigate back to the page you are on because you would still be on the same page.

Both can be enabled using CMD+D / CMD+CTRL+Z / Shake Gesture menu. Both are using watchman to listen to the file changes.

Live reloading reloads the entire app.

The idea behind hot reloading is to keep the app running and to inject new versions of the files that you edited at runtime. This way, you don't lose any of your state which is especially useful if you are tweaking the UI. So it reloads only that page which you change more info here

Hot Reload:

Hot reload is used to refresh only the file in which code is change

Live Reload:

Live Reload is used to refresh the whole app it does not concern in which file change comes.