Expo: Tunneling application for the world to use
If you are familiar with Expo and have used it then, I believe that you are familiar with the page in the photo below.
If you are not, then the above photo is the developer console you have when you are running an Expo application. The UI is easy to read and use. On the left you have several options to run the applications on various platforms. Below that you have an option to switch to production mode of the application, the connection type, the link to the application and finally the QR code for the Expo application. On the bigger part of the screen you have the console for Expo where you can see the logs for Expo and the application console which you can enable by clicking on the top right corner button shown in the photo below.
The updated console should look like this.
Let us consider you have an android device only and you want to test it on an iOS device. But like me you don’t have one. You remember your friend showing off hit iPhone a couple of days ago. Well that is all that we will need. That is all that is needed. Rest of the things are all handled by Expo. I will explain the process of tunneling your application so that the QR code that you see will be enough to run the application on devices that is on the opposite side of earth to you.
Change the application to tunnel mode:
In the expo developer console, you can see that you have three options:
- Tunnel
- LAN
- Local
Expo runs the application in LAN by default and you can switch to Tunnel by simply clicking on it. Expo might prompt you to register to their platform and create an account if you haven’t. This will take only a few minutes. After you have an account, switching yo tunnel mode should be enable for your application. You can see that the URL will also change.
Share the QR Code/Send the code in email:
The last thing to do is either you can screenshot the QR code and send it to your friend or you can even send the link to their email and expo will send it on your behalf. The options is on the left side bar.
After they install the application on their folder, they can run the application as long as you don’t close the expo application on your end.
It’s just that easy. All the internal things are handled by Expo and all you have to do is click and wait. If you have any questions related to tunneling your Expo application, you can refer to Expo documentation or you can reach out to me.
Thank you for reading!!!
