Install development builds in React Native and bare projects

Set up Expo modules

If you created your project with npx react-native init and do not have any other Expo packages installed, you'd need to install Expo modules before proceeding.

Otherwise, if you already have expo and/or other Expo modules up and running, you can skip this step.

Installation

Add the expo-dev-client library to your package.json:

If your project has an ios/ directory on disk, run the following command to fully install the native code for expo-dev-client:

If your project doesn't have an ios/ directory, you can skip this step.

Basic configuration

Development builds use deep links to open projects from the QR code. If you have added a custom deep link scheme to your project, your development build will use it. However, if this isn't the case, you need to configure the deep link support for your app. The uri-scheme package will do this for you once you have chosen a scheme.

For more information, see uri-scheme package.

Optional configuration

There are a few more changes you can make to get the best experience, but you can skip ahead to building if you prefer.

Disable packager autostart when building for iOS

When you start your project on iOS, the metro bundler will start automatically. This behavior might not be ideal when you want to use npx expo start. Our recommended solution is to remove the Start Packager action from building scripts. To do that you need to open the Xcode, go to Build Phases and remove the Start Packager action.

Add better error handlers

For certain type of errors, you can provide more helpful error messages. To turn this on, import expo-dev-client in the project's index file (in the managed workflow, you need to add this import on top of the App.{js|tsx}). Make sure that the import statement is above import App from './App'.

import 'expo-dev-client';
...
import App from "./App";

For more information, see Error handling.

Loading published updates

Development builds can also open and preview published updates to your app.

To add this feature, install expo-updates in your project:

After doing so, if your project has an ios/ directory on disk, you will need to reinstall CocoaPods:

Build and install

You're now ready to build your first development build.