The Expo client app for Android and iOS.
To develop or run Expo experiences on your device, download Expo for Android 4.4+ from the Play Store or for iOS 9+ from the App Store. Click here for instructions to install the app on an iOS simulator or Android emulator.
Click here to view our documentation for developing on Expo.
This is the source code for the Expo client app used to view experiences published to the Expo service. Most people will not need to build the Expo clients from source.
If you want to build a standalone app that has a custom icon and name, see our documentation here. You're in the wrong place, you shouldn't need to build the Expo clients from source.
If you need to make native code changes to your Expo project, such as adding custom native modules, we can generate a native project for you. You're in the wrong place, you shouldn't need to build the Expo clients from source.
If you want to build the Expo client apps for some reason, there are a few steps to getting this working:
- Join us on Slack at https://slack.expo.io/. The code base and build process is complicated so please ask us if you get stuck.
- Get the iOS and Android clients building on your machine using the Set Up section below.
- Make your native changes and test. You can still use XDE or exp and the rest of Expo's infrastructure.
These instructions are different if you are using Expo's internal monorepo. In that case, read the __internal__ instructions instead.
Please use Node 7 and npm 4. We recommend installing Node using nvm. We support building the clients only on macOS.
- Install the Gulp CLI globally:
npm i gulp-cli -g. - Clone xdl, run
npm installin the xdl directory and then rungulp build. Next, runnpm linkin the xdl directory. - Run
npm installin thejsandtools-publicdirectories. - Run
npm link xdlin thetools-publicdirectory. - If you don't have it yet, install exp, the Expo cli.
- Make sure you have Android Studio 2 and the Android NDK version
r10einstalled. - Build and install Android with
cd android; ./run.sh; cd ... It might fail the first time. If so just run./run.shagain.
If you are running on an phone with Android 5 you might have to use ./run.sh installDev19Debug. There is a bug running multidex applications in debug mode on Android 5 devices: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=79826.
- Make sure you have latest non-beta Xcode installed.
- Install Cocoapods:
gem install cocoapods --no-ri --no-rdoc - Make sure you have a JS packager for the root Expo project already running
cd tools-public; ./generate-files-ios.sh; cd ..cd ios; pod install; cd ..- Run
ios/Exponent.xcworkspacein Xcode.
Note: If you have the Expo client app from the Play Store or the App Store you will have to uninstall those before installing this client.
If you don't need custom native code outside of the Expo SDK, head over to our documentation on building standalone apps without needing Android Studio and Xcode.
If you're still here, make sure to follow the Configure app.json section of the docs before continuing. You'll need to add the appropriate fields to your app.json before the standalone app scripts can run. Once that's done, continue on to the platform-specific instructions.
The Android standalone app script creates a new directory android-shell-app with the modified Android project in it. It then compiles that new directory giving you a signed or unsigned .apk depending on whether you provide a keystore and the necessary passwords. If there are issues with the app you can open the android-shell-app project in Android Studio to debug.
Here are the steps to build a standalone Android app:
- Publish your experience from
XDEorexp. Note the published url. cd tools-public.- If you want a signed
.apk, rungulp android-shell-app --url [the published experience url] --sdkVersion [sdk version of your experience] --keystore [path to keystore] --alias [keystore alias] --keystorePassword [keystore password] --keyPassword [key password]. - If you don't want a signed
.apk, rungulp android-shell-app --url [the published experience url] --sdkVersion [sdk version of your experience]. - The
.apkfile will be at/tmp/shell-signed.apkfor a signed.apkor at/tmp/shell-debug.apkfor an unsigned.apk. adb installthe.apkfile to test it.- Upload to the Play Store!
The iOS standalone app script has two actions, build and configure. build creates an archive or a simulator build of the Expo iOS workspace. configure accepts a path to an existing archive and modifies all its configuration files so that it will run as a standalone Expo experience rather than as the Expo client app.
Here are the steps to build a standalone iOS app:
- Publish your experience from
XDEorexp. Note the published url. cd tools-public.gulp ios-shell-app --action build --type [simulator or archive] --configuration [Debug or Release]- The resulting archive will be created at
../shellAppBase-[type]. gulp ios-shell-app --url [the published experience url] --action configure --type [simulator or archive] --archivePath [path to Exponent.app] --sdkVersion [sdk version of your experience] --output your-app.tar.gz- This bundle is not signed and cannot be submitted to iTunes Connect as-is; you'll need to manually sign it if you'd like to submit it to Apple. Fastlane is a good option for this. Also, Expo will do this for you if you don't need to build this project from source.
- If you created a simulator build in the first step, unpack the tar.gz using
tar -xvzf your-app.tar.gz. Then you can run this on iPhone Simulator usingxcrun simctl install booted <app path>andxcrun simctl launch booted <app identifier>. Another alternative which some people prefer is to install the ios-sim tool and then useios-sim launch <app path>. - There are a few more optional flags you can pass to this script. They are all documented in the block comment for
createIOSShellAppAsync()insideios-shell-app.js.
The Expo client apps run a root Expo project in addition to native
code. By default this will use a published version of the project, so any changes
made in the js directory will not show up without some extra work.
Serve this project locally by running exp start from the js directory.
The native Android Studio and XCode projects have a build hook which
will find this if exp start is running. Keep this running and rebuild the
app on each platform.
androidcontains the Android project.ioscontains the iOS project.ios/Exponent.xcworkspaceis the Xcode workspace. Always open this instead ofExponent.xcodeprojbecause the workspace also loads the CocoaPods dependencies.jscontains the JavaScript source code of the app.tools-publiccontains build and configuration tools.template-filescontains templates for files that require private keys. They are populated using the keys intemplate-files/keys.json.template-files/ios/dependencies.jsonspecifies the CocoaPods dependencies of the app.
Please check with us before putting work into a Pull Request! It is often harder to maintain code than it is to write it. The best place to talk to us is on Slack at https://slack.expo.io.
The Expo source code is made available under the BSD 3-clause license. Some of the dependencies are licensed differently, with the MIT license, for example.