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expo-updates is a library that enables your app to manage remote updates to your application code. It communicates with the configured remote update service to get information about available updates.

Installation

The expo-updates library can be automatically configured using EAS Update, which is a hosted service that manages and serves updates to your app. To get started with EAS Update, follow the instructions in the Get started guide.

Alternatively, it is also possible to configure the expo-updates library manually in cases where a different remote update service is required or configuration is only specified in native files.

Configuration

There are build-time configuration options that control the behavior of the library. For most apps, these configuration values are set in the app config under the updates property.

The two core required configuration options are:

• updates.url: the URL at which the library fetches remote updates
• runtimeVersion: a runtime version

These are configured automatically when following the EAS Update Get started guide.

Runtime version

Each time you build a binary for your app it includes the native code and configuration present at the time of the build as well as native configuration, and this unique combination is represented by a string called a runtime version. A remote update targets one runtime version, indicating that only binaries with a matching runtime version can load the remote update.

{
  "expo": {
    "runtimeVersion": "<runtime_version_string>"
  }
}

{
  "expo": {
    "runtimeVersion": {
      "policy": "<policy_name>"
    }
  }
}

{
  "expo": {
    "runtimeVersion": {
      "policy": "appVersion"
    },
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "ios": {
      "buildNumber": "1"
    },
    "android": {
      "versionCode": 1
    }
  }
}

{
  "expo": {
    "runtimeVersion": {
      "policy": "nativeVersion"
    },
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "ios": {
      "buildNumber": "1"
    },
    "android": {
      "versionCode": 1
    }
  }
}

{
  "expo": {
    "runtimeVersion": {
      "policy": "fingerprint"
    }
  }
}

Native configuration and overriding

If your project does not use Continuous Native Generation, these configuration values may also be set in your app's native configuration files or overridden during initialization in native code.

#import "ExpoModulesCore-Swift.h"
#import "EXUpdatesInterface-Swift.h"
#import "EXUpdates-Swift.h"

Usage

By default, expo-updates checks for updates when the app launches. If an update is available, it downloads the update and applies it the next time the app is restarted. You can tune this startup behavior using the checkAutomatically and fallbackToCacheTimeout configuration options above.

The library also provides a variety of constants to inspect the current update and functions to customize update behavior from your application code (after startup). For example, one common alternative usage pattern is to manually check for updates after the app has started instead of doing the default check on launch.

Testing

Most of the methods and constants in this library can be used or tested only in release builds. In debug builds, the default behavior is to always load the latest JavaScript from a development server. It is possible to build a debug version of your app with the same updates behavior as a release build. Such an app will not open the latest JavaScript from your development server — it will load published updates just as a release build does. This may be useful for debugging the behavior of your app when it is not connected to a development server.

To test the content of an update in a development build, run eas update and then browse to the update in your development build. Note that this only simulates what an update will look like in your app, and most of the Updates API is unavailable when running in a development build.

To test updates in a release build, you can create a .apk or a simulator build, or make a release build locally with npx expo run:android --variant release and npx expo run:ios --configuration Release (you don't need to submit this build to the store to test). The full Updates API is available in a release build.

To test the content of an update in Expo Go, run eas update and then browse to the update in Expo Go. Note that this only simulates what an update will look like in your app, and most of the Updates API is unavailable when running in Expo Go. Also note that only updates using Expo Go-compatible libraries are supported.

API

import * as Updates from 'expo-updates';

No API data file found, sorry!

Error codes