The first time I built with expo, I submitted to iOS by first creating a standard RN project, dumping my working expo code into it, running npm install to get everything, and then running a manual bundle. Once I did that, I could send it to my iPhone using xCode directly to verify it was working.
I submitted that to the appStore, and I’ve done this twice, and it got accepted.
The second time I built, I found out about the Expo builder. It created the *.apk file for me, and I uploaded it to the AppStore using Application Loader on the Mac I was using. After two failures (icon couldn’t be transparent, version number was the same) I finally got it submitted. When they did the review, it got rejected because the app would only launch into a white screen. I saw the screenshot, and it’s only a white screen.
The second app is different, it uses MapView. Is there anything else I might need to be doing?
Is there any magic way to test the bundle before I submit to the App Store? I tried changing the apk file to a zip and dragged the .app file to the iPhone simulator, but it fails because the simulator config doesn’t match the native config. I checked online and that is normal behavior.
Also, I’m having trouble getting the maps to display on an Android published bundle as well. I went through the key generation steps and that looks to be all set up correctly, but the maps fail to display on the generated app. It works just fine through the EXPO app.
Got Google Sign-In fixed. Now I’m going to reread all of the documentation surrounding the iPhone version of Maps and Google SignIn, and if I can get those down, I’ll retry the TestFlight submission.
To keep on sharing my adventure here, I forgot that TestfFlight allows 25 immediate users of your app, without a review process. I was able to at least verify my app this time before launching it.
Also, learning about Expo’s OTA updates, I may have killed the app while it was being reviewed. I did not know that was possible.
Do you really need Google SignIn? I simply have the Maps API activated for both in the Google console and it’s working fine in production.
TestFlight’s 25 immediate users are your internal team only so I would think they would be more forgiving of beta problems.
You can generate a live simulator file for iOS (expo build:ios -t simulator) which can reveal some differences. But yeah the forgetting to activate the API SDK one gets me everytime because the package doesn’t show you a front-end error unlike the web version.
I use it for collecting data. Users are allowed to add markers to the map if signed in. If the user already signed into the app, it would be nice to retain that if they relaunch it.
Also, my latest rejection was because I didn’t add a Location Explination to my infoPlist. I now know better.
"ios":{
"infoPlist": {
"NSLocationWhenInUseUsageDescription": "Pittsburgh PokeResearch uses your location information to help you find and add research tasks near you."
}
},
