What is the best way to 'soft launch' a new React Native app built using Expo?

206

December 09, 2017, at 4:32 PM

We're working on an app with React Native using the Expo framework. The app is being developed for iOS and Android. We would like to release the app local to a certain region (Los Angeles) before releasing more broadly in the US. Based on my read of iOS and Android docs, we can only limit the app by country, not specific regions or localities such as Los Angeles. Does anyone have any recommendations on how we could launch the app to stores, but limit their download only to folks in a certain US region?

Answer 1

I don't believe this is possible, both iOS and Google App Stores can make your app discoverable by country only. if you're only wanting to "soft launch" the app for demonstration purposes only, an alternative solution would be to publish using the Expo XDE and provide users with the but this would require the end-user to then install Expo on their device.

https://blog.expo.io/publishing-on-exponent-790493660d24