React Native Track Player vs. Expo Audio

Choosing a React Native audio library depends primarily on whether audio is a minor feature, an embedded experience, or the core product. React Native Track Player (RNTP) remains oriented toward dedicated media applications through its native headless service architecture, advanced queue management, granular remote-control events, persistent playback behavior, and RNTP v5 support for CarPlay and Android Auto, but it does not provide recording and can involve higher setup and maintenance costs. RNTP v5 also introduced commercial licensing, while the MIT-licensed v4 may require patches to work reliably with modern React Native architecture, creating a tradeoff between subscription costs and native maintenance. Expo Audio, which replaces deprecated expo-av, has expanded to support playback, recording, background audio, lock-screen metadata, native playlists, preloading, and gapless playback with simpler Expo-focused integration. However, it offers less detailed remote-event control, lacks equivalent automotive features and built-in offline caching, and relies more on hook-based player instances than RNTP’s globally accessible API. Expo Audio is presented as a practical default for many new applications, especially those needing recording or straightforward media functionality, while RNTP is better suited to audio-first products requiring deep operating-system integration, sophisticated queues, custom media controls, offline capabilities, or automotive support.

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