Original react-native-cli is extended with CLI commands to generate, build and run react-native projects for desktop platform. To be able to create react-native apps for desktop platform you should either specify --version in the original CLI when creating a react-native app, react-native init DesktopApp --version status-im/react-native-desktop, or install the extended version of the CLI by following the next steps and then running react-native init DesktopApp.
git clone https://github.com/status-im/react-native-desktop.gitcd react-native-desktop/react-native-clinpm updatenpm uninstall -g react-native-cli(remove original package if installed)npm install -g