Releasing our React Native app used to take a developer most of a day: bump versions, sign, build two platforms, upload, fill in notes. We moved it to fastlane lanes run from CI on a git tag. Project layout, versioning, signing with match, TestFlight and Play internal tracks, secrets, and what still needs a human.
Our delivery app tracks a driver's route during a delivery. After targeting Android 14, tracking stopped minutes after the screen turned off, and on some devices the app crashed when tracking started. Android 14 requires a declared foreground service type and permission. How we fixed it.
After upgrading to React Native 0.79 with the New Architecture on by default, our in-house printer module came back null on iOS and crashed on Android. Bridge-only registration and direct bridge calls were the cause; here is the migration path.
Our React Native app ran perfectly in debug, then the release APK closed instantly on every device. adb logcat showed a ClassNotFoundException for a class used through reflection by a native SDK, which R8 had removed during minification. How we read the crash, wrote keep rules and verified with mapping.txt.