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React Native OTA Updates — Documentation

Ship JavaScript and asset changes to apps already installed on a device — no store review, no waiting. The five steps below take you from nothing to a shipped update.

Ship your first update

About ten minutes end to end. Steps 2–5 are once per app; after that, shipping is a single command.

  1. Create a free account

    1 min

    No card, no server to run. Every account starts on the Free plan.

    Create a free accountSign in

  2. Install and connect

    2 min

    Run this in your React Native project. ota init detects your stack, creates the project, writes ota.config.js and the release scripts, and prints one SDK key per channel.

    terminal
    npm install @otaupdate/react-native
npm install -g @otaupdate/cli

ota login
ota init

  3. Put the key in your build

    5 min

    One plugin entry for Expo, two edits per platform for bare React Native. The only step that differs by project type — both are in the quickstart, side by side.

  4. Add one line to your app

    1 min

    This checks on launch and on resume, installs on the next restart, and arms rollback protection.

    App.tsx
    export default withOtaUpdate(App);

  5. Rebuild once, then ship JS instantly

    3 min

    The rebuild is what puts the SDK in the binary — you only do it once, and it must be a release build. After that every JS change ships over the air in seconds.

    terminal
    npm run ota:staging     # ship to your staging channel
npm run ota:prod        # ship to production
npm run ota:doctor      # why isn't my update arriving?
Walk through it step by step →

Which setup are you on?

Only step 3 differs, and the quickstart covers both inline. These pages are the detail.

Expo

Your project has app.json or app.config.js

Add the config plugin with your channel key, then prebuild. No native files to touch.

Bare React Native

Your project has ios/ and android/ folders you edit

Point AppDelegate.swift and MainApplication.kt at the OTA bundle, then add the key.

Before you start

OTA only runs in release builds

A debug build loads JS from Metro, so the bundle path is never consulted and nothing you publish will appear. Always test with a release build. This wastes more time than everything else on this page combined.

What an update can and cannot replace

Can: anything inside the JS bundle and its assets — screens, logic, styles, images.

Cannot: a new native module, a permission, an SDK bump, or an Info.plist change. Those still need a store release. Shipping JS that calls a native API the installed binary lacks will crash the app — keep the two apart with a runtime version.

All guides

Start here

Quickstart

Create an account, connect your React Native app with one command, and ship your first over-the-air update — Expo and bare React Native, about ten minutes end to end.

Set up your app

Install the SDK

Add @otaupdate/react-native and the ota CLI to an Expo or bare React Native project, then connect the app with one command.

Configure Expo

Configure over-the-air updates in an Expo project with the OTA Update config plugin: one channel key, prebuild, and EAS Build notes.

Configure bare RN

Wire over-the-air updates into a bare React Native app: AppDelegate on iOS, MainApplication on Android (both templates), and the channel SDK key.

Wire up your app

Call the OTA Update SDK from your React Native app: check for updates, show progress, and control when a new bundle is applied.

Ship updates

Publish a release

Build a JavaScript bundle, publish it to a deployment, and verify that installed apps actually picked the update up.

Staged rollouts

Release to a percentage of devices, watch the failure rate, then widen. Bucketing is deterministic per device and per release.

Rollback

A rollback republishes the last good bundle as a new mandatory release, which reaches devices already running the bad build — unlike a pointer flip.

CI / CD

Publish over-the-air updates from a pipeline with a CI API key, including a GitHub Actions workflow you can copy.

Reference

CLI reference

Every ota CLI command: init, release, promote, rollback, status and doctor, plus the flags and environment variables they read.

SDK reference

Every method, install mode and no-update reason in the @otaupdate/react-native SDK.

Config reference

Every configuration option for the OTA Update SDK and CLI: channel SDK keys, ota.config.js, runtime versions and environment variables.

Plans & limits

What each plan includes: apps, monthly active users, releases, rollbacks and team members.

Developer Q&A

What you can and cannot ship over the air, how store review policy applies, and what happens when native code changes.