Open multi IOS simulator on EXPO

Expo SDK
1

Hi, I am new to React Native and Expo. I just start developing a simple real time chat app. Now I want to test and demo it by opening multi simulators and chat with each other. Is it possible to open multi simulators on EXPO? Or how to test the chat feature in general. Thanks would really appreciate any help from experts in this community!

2

Multiple simulators aren’t supported by Xcode (until Xcode 9 – still unreleased). The best way to test is with a real device, or perhaps across Android and iOS.

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3

Hi, thanks for answering my questions, really appreciate that. So by testing with a real device, you mean using USB cable connecting my iphone to my laptop and then simulate my app on my phone and text to the other simulator on my laptop right?

4

With Expo you don’t need a USB cable, but yes the idea is to run your project both on your real iPhone and your simulator and have them both connect to your server to chat.

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5

Thanks for the answer! I will try it out. Appreciate your time!

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6

Hi, sorry to bother you again. I have an issue running project on my real phone. My stack is React Native, Node.js and Socket.io. When I run the simulator on laptop, the simulator can connect with my backend server. But after I scan the bar code and run the project on my phone via the expo app. Project on my real iphone cannot connect with my server. Or in another word, it is like a mirror of the project on simulator and not behaving like a new user trying to connect with the server. When I change my code and save it, both of them will reload. Any chance that you know how to handle this situation? Thanks for your time!

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Sounds like the phone can’t connect to the node server running on your computer. You won’t be able to use a localhost address for your server when running an app on your phone. You can either use a LAN address or use a service such as ngrok.

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Yep that was the problem. It worked after I used ngrok. Thanks for the suggestion! Appreciate that.

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9

Now that multiple simulators are supported what is the best way to get your expo app on all of them?

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