Edit this page
Learn about the process of creating a production build for iOS and automating the release process.
Edit this page
In this chapter, we'll create our example app's production version and submit it for testing using TestFlight. After that, we'll submit them for App Store review to get it on the App Store.
To publish and distribute an app on the Apple Play Store, we need:
production
build profile is present in your eas.json, which is added by default.A production iOS build is optimized for Apple's App Store Connect, which allows distributing builds to testers with TestFlight and public end users through the App Store. This build type cannot be side-loaded on a simulator or device and can only be distributed through App Store Connect.
1
Run the eas credentials
command in the terminal and then answer the following prompts by EAS CLI:
2
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.
-
eas build --platform ios
The command will queue the build. Notice on the Expo dashboard that the Build Number is auto-incremented.
3
To submit the app binary created from our latest EAS Build, run the eas submit
command:
-
eas submit --platform ios
After running this command, we need to:
This will trigger the submission process.
4
After the submission process is complete, we'll need to log in to the Apple Developer account from the web browser.
Tip: Next time when creating an app, skip this compliance by addingios.config.usesNonExemptEncryption
in app config and set it tofalse
if the app doesn't use any encryption.
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.
5
To prepare our app for App Store submission, go to the App Store tab:
Complete App Store listing: To prepare the app for store listing, see Create app store assets on how to create screenshots and previews.
6
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
:
-
eas build --platform ios --auto-submit
Chapter 9: Create a production build for iOS
We successfully created a production-ready iOS build, discussed distribution using TestFlight and Apple App Store using eas submit
, and automated the release process with the --auto-submit
.
In the next chapter, learn how to use the EAS Update to send OTA updates and share previews with our team.