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Building and publishing the app

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Mats Tyldum edited this page Apr 21, 2021 · 1 revision

iOS - First time publishing or updated app.json

Refer to the guide in Expo's documentation: Building Standalone Apps.

Short version:

  • Run expo build:ios. Expo CLI will handle all credentials, signing, and certificate for you🎉
  • Download the .ipa file from Expo
  • Use Transporter or expo upload:ios to upload the app to App Store Connect.

iOS - Updating the app

For the most part, when you want to update your app, just run expo publish again from Expo CLI. Your users will download the new JS the next time they open the app. To ensure your users have a seamless experience downloading JS updates, you may want to enable background JS downloads. However, there are a couple reasons why you might want to rebuild and resubmit the native binaries:

  • If you want to change native metadata like the app's name or icon
  • If you upgrade to a newer SDK version of your app (which requires new native code)

If you need to do this you will need to update your app's versionCode and buildNumber in app.json. Then you need to build and resubmit the app to App Store Connect as described in 'First time' above.

Android - First time publishing or updated app.json

If the app includes major changes, you need to build the app again.

  1. To build the app correctly with push notifications you will need the google-service.json file referred to in app.json. This can be downloaded here
  2. You have to increment expo.android.versionCode in app.json
  3. Run expo build:android and choose 'app-bundle'.

Upload / Submit to Google Play Store

When the build is finished you need to upload the new build to Google Play Store.

  1. You also need the Google Service Account key. Download this here (Google Cloud Platform > Console > Hover-game > IAM & Admins > Service Accounts > In the list download the key for [email protected]).

  2. Run expo upload:android. When asked what build you would like to submit choose The latest build from Expo servers.

  3. When the build is uploaded, to the internal testing program (you should test it), and when you are ready find the new release and Copy the track to Production. Then Google will review your new submission and hopefully approve it.

Android - Updating the app

  1. Increment the expo.version in app.json
  2. Run expo publish
  3. Verify that the new version was published in Google Play Console.

Created by Mats Tyldum and Siri Mykland

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