Expo iOS build crashing on splash screen

Question

I developed an app using Expo and React Native. The app worked fine during development using the Expo Go app, I tested in Android and iOS.

Then I built each app using expo build. The production Android app works fine, but the iOS app crashes within a couple seconds of the splash screen being brought up, both on a real device and when I run a simulator build. I built the iOS app as an archive and it is currently in Test Flight. I was able to deploy previous versions to the app store with no crashes.

I downloaded the crash logs and the last exception reference is:

UIKitCore: -[UIApplication _checkBackgroundRefreshAPIAdoption]

I cannot find a reference to checkBackgroundRefreshAPIAdoption anywhere. The last big change I made was adding MapView functionality, but I have also tried removing all references to the MapView and rebuilding and still run into the same issue.

Edit: forgot to add, I did follow the instructions for deploying a standalone iOS app found here https://docs.expo.dev/versions/latest/sdk/map-view/

Does anyone know what the problem could be?

Answer 1

I ended up figuring this one out myself. It had nothing to do with the maps api as I thought.

It was actually part of notifications. When I had added notifications to the app I added the UIBackgroundModes property to the infoPlist object under ios in my app.json file. I had put this in as a string but this property needs to be an array of strings.

Here is what I had before: "infoPlist": {"UIBackgroundModes": "remote-notification"}

And this is what I changed it to: "infoPlist": {"UIBackgroundModes": ["remote-notification"]}

The app now loads normally.

Here is the full relevant part of app.json file:

{"expo": { "ios": { "infoPlist": { "UIBackgroundModes": ["remote-notification"] } } } }

Answer 2

In my case, it was due to missing credential in AndroidManifest.xml file that I forgot to add. I ran adb logcat and found error in the logs thats why the app was crashing on the splash screen.

<meta-data android:name="com.google.android.gms.ads.APPLICATION_ID" android:value="YOUR_KEY"/>

Check for misconfiguration by running adb logcat and read logs when your app is crashing