June 2025 Summaries

In mid-2024, Paul Brickles joined Awaze to lead the development of three branded mobile apps for the vacation rental group, using a single codebase and React Native. Tasked with building apps for cottages.com, Hoseasons, and Novasol, the team faced the challenge of delivering within a tight 10-month timeframe due to the seasonal nature of the business. Leveraging the Expo framework and its suite of tools, they prioritized minimizing complexity and cognitive load, allowing the team to focus on the guest experience rather than infrastructure. Expo's capabilities, such as EAS Build and Update, facilitated seamless app management across brands, with a shared architecture supporting language localization and quick updates. Despite the constraints, the team successfully launched the apps in time for the peak booking season, transforming the project from a cost center to a revenue stream and laying the groundwork for future enhancements and native integration.

Adding in-app subscriptions to an Expo app is streamlined through the use of RevenueCat’s React Native SDKs, allowing developers to focus on creating engaging user experiences without being bogged down by backend complexities. This process involves setting up RevenueCat’s SDKs, creating store listings for both iOS and Android, and deploying a custom paywall using RevenueCat’s visual editor. With Expo’s development build tools and RevenueCat’s UI components, developers can efficiently implement monetization features within 20 minutes, ensuring cross-platform compatibility and seamless subscription management. The guide details each step, from installing necessary SDKs and configuring app store products to initializing the SDK and integrating a paywall, ultimately enabling apps to handle subscriptions, entitlement checks, and monetization flows effectively. Once the setup is complete, developers can further refine their offerings, iterate on paywall designs, and track performance metrics via the RevenueCat dashboard, fostering a successful subscription-based business model.

After experiencing a personal setback in attempting to climb a 5,000-meter mountain, a software developer channeled the disappointment into creating 100cims, a mobile app for mountain enthusiasts. Designed to track mountain summits, the app allows users to log climbs, earn scores based on difficulty and elevation, view summit histories, and compare achievements with friends. Built using React Native and powered by Expo, 100cims offers seamless functionality across iOS and Android. The backend employs Elysia.js for API architecture, ensuring type safety and performance, while the database is managed via Drizzle ORM on Supabase. The app has organically attracted over 200 users and logged more than 1,000 summits in under four months. Its features include hiking plans with chat functionality, and future updates aim to enhance user interaction through gamification and community-driven challenges. The developer's journey from personal failure to creating a widely-used application illustrates the potential of over-engineering a passion project into a community tool.

Expo SDK 53 introduces protected routes to Expo Router, enabling developers to manage authentication flows more efficiently within their app's navigation structure. This feature allows developers to control screen access directly in layout files based on user authentication status using Stack.Protected and Tabs.Protected components. By setting a guard prop, developers can specify whether a screen should be accessible, and if navigation to a guarded screen is attempted, it will fail silently or redirect to the next available screen. This approach streamlines the management of logged in and logged out views, allowing for the nesting of protected routes and the conditional display of elements like bottom tabs and modals, thus aligning the navigation structure more closely with app logic. The changes aim to simplify codebases by eliminating the need for complex redirects and providing a declarative way to define authentication flows.

Stepan Parunashvili's guest post explores the process of building a full-stack, multiplayer chat app using Expo and Instant, a real-time database solution that simplifies frontend and backend development. The article highlights how Expo streamlines frontend development by allowing developers to write code once for iOS, Android, and web apps, with features like hot reloading and easy app store deployment. Instant tackles backend complexities by providing a database that handles data synchronization, offline functionality, and real-time updates without the need for traditional backend components like endpoints and stores. The post walks through building "EmojiChat," a chat app using emojis, showcasing Instant's capabilities in schema management, real-time data handling, and integrated permissions to secure data against unauthorized changes. The development process described emphasizes efficiency and productivity by reducing the "schleps" associated with traditional backend development, ultimately encouraging developers to focus on creating innovative features.

NeonCity is a casual game set in a futuristic 2077 city, developed by Woojae Lee and a fellow game designer, inspired by the series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. The game challenges players to perform swipe gestures corresponding to falling arrows to score points within a one-minute limit, enhanced by a fast-paced soundtrack and vibrant visuals. Built using React Native and Expo, the developers utilized NativeWind for consistent UI across platforms, a custom hook for efficient swipe gesture detection, and a sprite image technique to optimize performance by reducing re-renders. The sprite image method involves using a single, larger image to manage animations smoothly while maintaining high frame rates. Expo's tools, like EAS Build, streamlined the deployment process for both Android and iOS platforms. To encourage further development, the creators have made NeonCity open-source, inviting others to explore its code on GitHub.

ReactRaptor is an Android tool designed to identify whether mobile apps are developed using React Native or Expo by scanning the assets and native libraries within APK files. Created out of a curiosity about app development and a desire to fill a gap left by existing tools like LibChecker, ReactRaptor was built with the aid of AI tools to navigate Kotlin and Android APIs. It detects specific libraries and files, like the "index.android.bundle," to determine the presence of React Native and Expo components. The tool requires specific permissions to access installed apps and uses coroutines to address performance issues during file analysis. ReactRaptor highlights that many popular apps, such as Coinbase, Discord, and Amazon, utilize React Native and Expo to varying extents. Available on the Google Play Store, ReactRaptor allows users to explore the underlying technologies of apps on their devices, and its source code is accessible on GitHub for those interested in further exploration.