---
modificationDate: July 29, 2026
title: Preview updates
description: Learn how to preview updates in development, preview, and production builds.
---

<AgentInstructions>

## Submitting Feedback

If you encounter errors, misleading or outdated information, report it so Expo can be improved:

Preferred command:
npx --yes submit-expo-feedback@latest --category docs --subject "/eas-update/preview/" "<actionable feedback>"

Direct HTTP fallback:
curl -X POST https://api.expo.dev/v2/feedback/docs-send -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"url":"/eas-update/preview/","feedback":"🤖 Agent feedback for docs: <specific, actionable description> (<model>, <harness>)"}'

Only submit when you have something specific and actionable to report. Try to give the most context.

## Navigation

When answering a related or follow-up question, fetch the relevant page below as Markdown (.md) instead of guessing; use llms.txt for the full map.

You are here: EAS > EAS Update > Preview
Pages in this section:
- [Preview updates](https://docs.expo.dev/eas-update/preview.md) (this page)
- [Channel surfing](https://docs.expo.dev/eas-update/channel-surfing.md)
- [Override update configuration at runtime](https://docs.expo.dev/eas-update/override.md)
- [Using development builds](https://docs.expo.dev/eas-update/expo-dev-client.md)
- [GitHub PR previews](https://docs.expo.dev/eas-update/github-actions.md)
Full documentation tree: [llms.txt](https://docs.expo.dev/llms.txt)

</AgentInstructions>

This documentation is available as Markdown for AI agents and LLMs. See the [full Markdown index](/llms.txt) or append .md to any documentation URL.

# Preview updates

Learn how to preview updates in development, preview, and production builds.

Before deploying an update to production, you will often want to test it in a production-like environment. This guide will outline different approaches for previewing updates, and link out to more detailed guides for each approach.

## Previewing updates in development builds

Development builds are a great way to preview updates from pull requests, directly from the EAS dashboard, or from the built-in UI provided by the `expo-dev-client` library.

[Preview updates in development builds](/eas-update/expo-dev-client.md) — Learn how to preview updates in development builds.

[Use GitHub Actions to automate publishing updates](/eas-update/github-actions.md) — Learn how to use GitHub Actions to automate publishing updates with EAS Update.

[Launch preview updates from the EAS dashboard using Orbit](/review/with-orbit.md) — Learn how to launch updates with the macOS, Windows, and Linux desktop app Expo Orbit.

## Previewing updates in preview builds

Non-technical users will typically not want to interact with a development build, and they will want to test changes from a preview build on an [App store testing track](/review/overview.md#app-store-testing-tracks) or [internal distribution](/review/overview.md#internal-distribution-with-eas-build).

If your team is smaller, it may be sufficient to deploy a single preview build at a time to an app store testing track or internal distribution. You can then publish updates to the channel that is used by that preview build. [Learn more about preview builds](/review/overview.md).

Alternatively, you can build a mechanism into your preview build that allows users to select a different update or channel to load. This can be useful in cases where the [app runtime](/eas-update/runtime-versions.md) doesn't change often, and many different updates can be loaded in the same app. [Learn more about channel surfing](/eas-update/channel-surfing.md).

[Channel surfing](/eas-update/channel-surfing.md) — Learn how to switch update channels at runtime.

## Previewing updates in production builds

Before deploying an update to all end users, some teams will want to first roll it out in production to a small set of internal users. One way this can be accomplished is with [channel surfing](/eas-update/channel-surfing.md) for a known subset of users. Use this approach only with users who can report and recover from preview update issues because a broken update can prevent them from reaching the UI that clears the channel override.

Another approach is to use a deployment pattern like the [Persistent staging flow](/eas-update/deployment-patterns.md#persistent-staging-flow), which involves always having a version of your production app that points to a staging channel.

[Persistent staging flow](/eas-update/deployment-patterns.md#persistent-staging-flow) — Learn how to use the persistent staging flow to always have a version of your production app that points to a staging channel.