Can I build an app for windows 7 using expo?
I’m unsure if it will work on windows 7 but you can always try! I’ve only tried windows 10
You could take a look at the proton-native project which offers the prospect of using react-native to build desktop apps.
The primary reason expo is such a success is that handling an Android studio and/or XCode project requires a good level of knowledge of those tools and workflows. Expo means you don’t have to worry about them. I know that without Expo, I probably wouldn’t have looked at React native much, and I definitely wouldn’t have released a mobile app in 6 weeks with no prior knowledge of React native (yep, I managed this - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iocube.panther).
Since Windows doesn’t use the same concepts as mobile in terms of permissions and the libraries it calls, there’d be no reason to use Expo. You can access a browser-based Maps API from Google, Here and other providers, and many desktop API’s you might want to access are much easier to work with due to lower restrictions (security).
Additionally, compiling for Windows is much easier as it’s been established as ‘accessible to most developers’ for around 25 years (vs mobile which has only been relatively accessible for around 7-8 and much less in the JS space), and there are projects such as Electron which are designed around this idea. That can serve a react-based UI, but proton-native mentioned above might be more in line with what you’re looking for.
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thanks for the great answer! i misread the question as being about using windows 7 to build mobile apps with expo, i appreciate you stepping in and giving a correct response 
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