Building Standalone Apps
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The purpose of this guide is to help you create standalone binaries of your Expo app for iOS and
Android which can be submitted to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
An Apple Developer account is needed to build an iOS standalone app, but a Google Play Developer
account is not needed to build the Android standalone app. If you'd like to submit to either app
store, you will need a developer account on that store.
It's a good idea to read the best practices about
Deploying to App Stores to
ensure your app is in good shape to get accepted into the Apple and Google marketplaces. We can
generate builds for you, but it's up to you to make your app awesome.
Expo CLI is the tool for developing and building Expo apps. Run npm install -g expo-cli (or yarn global add expo-cli) to get it.
If you haven't created an Expo account before, you'll be asked to create one when running the build command.
Windows users must have WSL enabled. You can follow the installation guide
here. We recommend picking Ubuntu from the Windows Store. Be sure
to launch Ubuntu at least once. After that, use an Admin powershell to run:
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux {
"expo": {
"name": "Your App Name",
"icon": "./path/to/your/app-icon.png",
"version": "1.0.0",
"slug": "your-app-slug",
"ios": {
"bundleIdentifier": "com.yourcompany.yourappname",
"buildNumber": "1.0.0"
},
"android": {
"package": "com.yourcompany.yourappname",
"versionCode": 1
}
}
}
- The iOS
bundleIdentifier and Android package fields use reverse DNS notation, but don't have to be related to a domain. Replace "com.yourcompany.yourappname" with whatever makes sense for your app. - You're probably not surprised that
name, icon and version are required. slug is the url name that your app's JavaScript is published to. For example: expo.dev/@community/native-component-list, where community is my username and native-component-list is the slug.- The
ios.buildNumber and android.versionCode distinguish different binaries of your app. Make sure to increment these for each build you upload to the App Store or Google Play Store.
There are other options you might want to add to
app.json. We have only covered what is
required. For example, some people like to configure their own build number, linking scheme, and
more. We highly recommend you read through
Configuration with app.json / app.config.js for the
full spec. This is also your last chance to double check our
recommendations
for App Store metadata.
Run expo build:android or expo build:ios. If you don't already have a development server running for this project, expo will start one for you.
Please note: When you run
expo build, Expo automatically publishes your app (with
expo publish). In order to avoid accidentally publishing changes to your production app, you may want to use
release channels.
When building for android you can choose to build APK (
expo build:android -t apk) or Android App Bundle (
expo build:android -t app-bundle).
App bundles are recommended, but you have to make sure the
Google Play App Signing is enabled for your project,
you can read more about it
here.
The first time you build the project you will be asked whether you'd like to upload a keystore or
have us handle it for you. If you don't know what a keystore is, you can have us generate one for you. Otherwise,
feel free to upload your own.
If you choose to let Expo generate a keystore for you, we strongly recommend that you later run expo fetch:android:keystore
and backup your keystore to a safe location. Once you submit an app to the Google Play Store, all future updates to that app must
be signed with the same keystore to be accepted by Google. If, for any reason, you delete your project or clear your credentials
in the future, you will not be able to submit any updates to your app if you have not backed up your keystore.
[exp] No currently active or previous builds for this project.
Would you like to upload a keystore or have us generate one for you?
If you don't know what this means, let us handle it! :)
1) Let Expo handle the process!
2) I want to upload my own keystore!
Note: If you choose the first option and later decide to upload your own keystore, we currently offer an option to clear your current Android keystore from our build servers by running
expo build:android --clear-credentials. This is irreversible, so only run this command if you know what you are doing! You can download a backup copy of the keystore by running
expo fetch:android:keystore.
If you do not have a local copy of your keystore , you will be unable to publish new versions of your app to the Play Store. Your only option would be to generate a new keystore and re-upload your application as a new application. You can learn more about how code signing and keystores work
in the Android documentation.
You can build standalone apps for iOS with two different types, an archive (expo build:ios -t archive) or simulator (expo build:ios -t simulator) build.
With the simulator build, you can test your standalone app on a simulator.
If you want to publish your app to the store or distribute it with tools like TestFlight, you have to use the archive.
When building for iOS, you are given a choice of letting Expo create the necessary credentials for you,
while still having a chance to provide your own overrides. Your Apple ID and password are used locally and are never saved on Expo's servers.
$ expo build:ios
[16:44:37] Checking if current build exists...
[16:44:37] No currently active or previous builds for this project.
[16:44:37]
We need your Apple ID/password to manage certificates, keys
and provisioning profiles from your Apple Developer account.
Note: Expo does not keep your Apple ID or your Apple ID password.
? What\'s your Apple ID? xxx@yyy.zzz
? Password? [hidden]
✔ Authenticated with Apple Developer Portal successfully!
[16:44:46] You have 4 teams associated with your account
? Which team would you like to use? 3) ABCDEFGHIJ "John Turtle" (Individual)
✔ Ensured App ID exists on Apple Developer Portal!
[16:44:59] We do not have some credentials for you: Apple Distribution Certificate, Apple Push Notifications service key, Apple Provisioning Profile
? How would you like to upload your credentials? (Use arrow keys)
❯ Expo handles all credentials, you can still provide overrides
I will provide all the credentials and files needed, Expo does limited validation
Unless you're very familiar with iOS credentials already, it's best to let Expo handle the creation & management of all your credentials for you. If you'd like to know more about iOS credentials, we've written a guide with everything you need to know
here.
The Expo build service supports both normal App Store distribution as well as enterprise distribution. To use the latter, you must be a member of the
"Apple Developer Enterprise Program". Only normal Apple Developer accounts can build apps that can be submitted to the Apple App Store, and only enterprise developer accounts can build apps that can be distributed using enterprise distribution methods. When you call
expo build:ios, you just need to choose the correct team, it will be labeled
(In-House).
Since this requires you to provide credential overrides, this feature should only be used if you're comfortable with iOS credentials.
It's usually easiest to test your standalone app on a simulator with the expo build:ios -t simulator command, and then use TestFlight for your physical device testing. But if you'd like an IPA that you can install directly onto your physical device through Xcode, you can generate one with Expo CLI:
- Run
expo build:ios once to generate some preliminary certificates, namely your app identifier, and distribution certificate. - Now, create a new provisioning profile here, and under
Distribution, select Adhoc. Then provide your app identifier and the distribution certificate you created in the last step. If you don't provide those exact certificates, your build will fail. - Download the provisioning profile, and then pass it to the build command like this:
expo build:ios --provisioning-profile-path ~/Path/To/provisioningProfileYouCreated.mobileprovision, and make sure the rest of the certificates you use match those you selected when creating your adhoc provisioning profile in the previous step.
Once Expo finishes your build, you can install it onto your device via Xcode by opening the Devices & Simulators window, selecting your connected device, and under Installed Apps, click the + and then select the IPA Expo generated for you.
Note: We enable bitcode for iOS, so the
.ipa files for iOS are much larger than the eventual App Store download available to your users. For more information, see
App Thinning.
If you are using Push Notifications Certificate and want to switch to a Push Notifications Key you need
to start the build with --clear-push-cert. We will remove the legacy certificate from our servers and generate a Push Notifications Key for you.
When one of our building machines is free, it'll start building your app. You can check how long you'll wait on the
Turtle status site. We'll print a url you can visit (such as
expo.dev/builds/some-unique-id) to watch your build progress and access the build logs. Alternatively, you can check up on it by running
expo build:status. When it's done, you'll see the url to your app file - an
.apk,
.aab (both Android), or
.ipa (iOS) file. Copy and paste the link into your browser to download the file.
- To run it on your Android Emulator, first build your project with the apk flag by running
expo build:android -t apk, and you can drag and drop the .apk into the emulator. - To run it on your Android device, make sure you have the Android platform tools installed along with
adb, then just run adb install app-filename.apk with USB debugging enabled on your device and the device plugged in.
To run it on your iOS simulator, first build your project with the simulator flag by running expo build:ios -t simulator, then download the artifact with the link printed when your build completes. To install the resulting tar.gz file, unzip it and drag-and-drop it into your iOS simulator. If you'd like to install it from the command line, run tar -xvzf your-app.tar.gz to unpack the file, open a simulator, then run xcrun simctl install booted <path to .app>.
To test a device build with Apple TestFlight, download the
.ipa file to your local machine. Within
App Store Connect, click the plus icon and create a New App. Make sure your
bundleIdentifier matches what you've placed in
app.json. Now, you need to use Xcode or
Transporter (previously known as Application Loader) to upload the
.ipa you got from
expo build:ios. Once you do that, you can check the status of your build under
Activity. Processing an app can take 10-15 minutes before it shows up under available builds.
For the most part, when you want to update your app, just 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)
To keep track of this, you'll need to update your app's
versionCode and
buildNumber in app.json (see
here for details).
It is a good idea to glance through the
app.json documentation to get an idea of all the properties you can change, e.g. the icons, deep linking url scheme, handset/tablet support, and a lot more.
If you run into problems during this process, we're more than happy to help out!
Join our Forums and let us know if you have any questions.