Create a production build for iOS

Create a distribution provisioning profile

Run the eas credentials command in the terminal and then answer the following prompts by EAS CLI:

• Select platform iOS.
• Which build profile do you want to configure? Select production.
• Do you want to log in to your Apple account? Press Y. This will log in to our Apple Developer account.
• What do you want to do? Select Build credentials and choose All: Set up all the required credentials to build your project.
• Now, it will prompt whether we want to re-use the previous Distribution Certificate. Press Y.
• Generate a new Apple Provisioning Profile? Press Y. This will be the provisioning profile for the production app.
• Press any key to exit the EAS CLI.

Create a production build

To create an iOS production build using the default production profile, open your terminal and execute the following command. Since production is set as the default profile in the EAS configuration, there is no need to specify it explicitly with the --profile flag.

The command will queue the build. Notice on the Expo dashboard that the Build Number is auto-incremented.

Submit the app binary to the App Store

To submit the app binary created from our latest EAS Build, run the eas submit command:

After running this command, we need to:

• Select a build from EAS. Let's select the latest build ID.
• Follow the prompt to log in to our Apple account. When it asks for Reuse this App Store Connect API Key? Press Y.

This will trigger the submission process.

Release an internal testing version

After the submission process is complete, we'll need to log in to the Apple Developer account from the web browser.

• Click Apps, and see the app icon.
• Click the app name, and from the navigation tab menu, click TestFlight. If the build was just submitted, it may take a few minutes for Apple to process the build before it is available to distribute with TestFlight.
• Click on the Manage Compliance link. Since our app doesn't use any encryption, select None of the algorithms mentioned above.

Tip: Next time when creating an app, skip this compliance by adding ios.config.usesNonExemptEncryption in app config and set it to false if the app doesn't use any encryption.

• In App Store Connect, under Internal Testing, and create a test group. This will allow us to invite test users.

• Once the group is created, an email will be sent to all the test users.

• In the email, click View in TestFlight, accept the invite, and then tap Install.

After that, the app will download on our device so that we can test it.

Note: Similar to internal testing, we can also create a group for inviting external testers using TestFlight. Where internal testing has a limit of 100 users, TestFlight allows sharing a test release version externally with up to 10,000 testers and provides a publicly shareable link. For brevity, we are not going to cover those steps in this tutorial.

Submit the app to the Apple App Store

To prepare our app for App Store submission, go to the App Store tab:

• Provide metadata details, provide screenshots as per Apple's guidelines and also fill details under General.

• Then, manually select the build.

Complete App Store listing: To prepare the app for store listing, see Create app store assets on how to create screenshots and previews.

• Once our app is ready, click on Submit to App Review. After that, Apple will review our app, and if approved, the app will be available on the App Store.

Automated submissions

For future releases, we can streamline the process by combining build creation and App Store submission into a single step by using the --auto-submit flag with eas build: