Generate release mode APK for React-Native project to publish on PlayStore

Zilu Ramkrishna Rane Jun 4 '18 ・1 min read

#reactnative #apk

Good Day All! I hope you are doing Good.

From last couple of days, Me and my friends were doing comparative study of ionic3 and react-native. During that period, we were struggling to generate release mode APK for React-Native project.

Finally, we came across following solution:

Create and then copy a keystore file to android/app

keytool -genkey -v -keystore mykeystore.keystore -alias mykeyalias -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

Setup your gradle variables in android/gradle.properties

MYAPP_RELEASE_STORE_FILE=mykeystore.keystore
MYAPP_RELEASE_KEY_ALIAS=mykeyalias
MYAPP_RELEASE_STORE_PASSWORD=*****
MYAPP_RELEASE_KEY_PASSWORD=*****

Add signing config to android/app/build.gradle

android {
signingConfigs {
release {
storeFile file(MYAPP_RELEASE_STORE_FILE)
storePassword MYAPP_RELEASE_STORE_PASSWORD
keyAlias MYAPP_RELEASE_KEY_ALIAS
keyPassword MYAPP_RELEASE_KEY_PASSWORD
}
}
buildTypes {
release {
signingConfig signingConfigs.release
}
}
}

Generate your release APK:

cd android && ./gradlew assembleRelease

Your APK will get generated at: android/app/build/outputs/apk/app-release.apk

Special Thanks to Tyler Buchea : http://blog.tylerbuchea.com/react-native-publishing-an-android-app/

DISCUSS (11)

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Zilu Ramkrishna Rane

#TypeScript, ReactJS, #JavaScript, #NodeJS, #DotNet, #Jest, #WebDriverIO

mrcflorian

Apr 30

Thanks for the tutorial! I've put up an article containing several errors that I encounter when building a release APK for React Native pretty frequently.

Anaga Uche

May 2

I love your article, thanks

Author

Thanks mrcflorian

Hi Zilu. Follow your instructions, obtain error:

Unable to load script. Make sure you're either running a Metro server (run 'react-native start') or that your bundle 'index.android.bundle' is packaged correctly for release.

Zilu Ramkrishna Rane

Author

May 1

You get this error after running which command?
Could you please provide more details.

Emicarito ★

Jan 6

Hi Zilu,

If you are in Windows the last command is cd android && gradlew assembleRelease

whitout the "./"

Ayesh Nipun Dinurang

May 19

Thanks for the article. The app was built without errors. But when I install it on my device and run the app, App keeps stopping with the message "App keeps stooping"