All Articles
Keep Audio Playing in the Background and Add Lock Screen Controls in a Rork App
How to make a Rork-generated Expo app keep playing music or healing sounds in the background and expose lock screen and Control Center controls, with working expo-audio code and the platform-specific gotchas.
When Push Notifications Reach Only Some Users — A Delivery-Reliability and Diagnosis Design for Rork (Expo) Apps
A design for diagnosing why push notifications reach only some users in a Rork-generated Expo app, by splitting send-to-display into stages and measuring delivery to close the gap. Covers stale-token cleanup, recording APNs/FCM failure codes, priority and message type, and a per-user triage procedure, with implementation.
Why Reinstalling Users Don't Return to 'First Run' — A First-Launch and State-Persistence Design for Rork (Expo) Apps
How to fix broken first-launch detection, onboarding, and free-trial state on reinstall in a Rork-generated Expo app, by treating it as an asymmetry in storage persistence. Covers what survives uninstall on iOS vs Android, separating install and version axes, and server-authoritative entitlements, with implementation.
Why Untranslated Strings Leak to Production Every Time You Add a Language — A Catalog and Gap-Detection Design for Rork (Expo) Apps
A design for stopping untranslated strings from leaking into production after you localize a Rork-generated Expo app. Covers a single source-of-truth catalog, CI-based missing/extra key detection, explicit fallback chains, plurals, and pseudolocalization for layout — with implementation.
Why Your 9 AM Reminder Stops Arriving Abroad — Making Expo Local Notifications Survive Time Zones and DST
Daily reminders built with Rork (Expo) can drift to the wrong local time when users travel or DST flips. Here is the timeInterval trap, and a design that reschedules against local wall-clock time, with working code.
The App Privacy Section That Grows the Moment You Add Ads and Subscriptions — Notes on What I Actually Checked
How I filled out App Store Connect's App Privacy section for a Rork (Expo) app with AdMob, RevenueCat, and Crashlytics — including the tracking-to-ATT chain, written up as field notes from running six apps.
Crashes Only in the Release Build — Rescuing Classes R8 Stripped in Expo (Android)
I turned on R8 code shrinking to slim down an AAB, and one screen started crashing only in production. Here is how I traced the stripped class through mapping.txt and added keep rules via expo-build-properties.
Three Builds on One iPhone: Environment Separation for Rork (Expo) Apps
Split a Rork-generated Expo app into dev, staging, and production builds that live side by side on one device. A hands-on walkthrough of dynamic app.config.ts, eas.json profiles, and isolating notifications, analytics, and billing per environment.
Why Paying Members See a Paywall in Airplane Mode — Keeping RevenueCat Entitlements Alive Offline
Open the app on a weak connection and a paying subscriber sees a paywall flash for a second. Here is how RevenueCat's customerInfo wavers on an offline launch, and a cache design that keeps entitlements valid with a trust window — written as working code for an Expo app.
Keeping Your Rork App's Expo SDK Upgradable Year After Year — Release Trains and Regression Safety Nets
A maintenance design for keeping Rork-generated Expo apps running through yearly Expo SDK upgrades without breakage. Covers release-train cadence, dependency pinning, regression safety nets, and splitting OTA from store delivery, with real examples.
When an Image-Heavy Rork App Quietly Bloats Its Cache and Dies on Memory — Field Notes on Measuring and Capping
In a Rork app where images are the product, expo-image's disk cache and resident memory creep up over a session and surface as OOM crashes. Here's how I measured the bloat, where I set caps, and what I trimmed on the delivery side — with working code, in the order that actually helped.
Three Implementations You Always Face with Next.js and Supabase — RLS, State, and Real-Time
Past building the foundation of a web app lie three things you always get stuck on — DB access control (RLS), screen state management, and real-time updates — explained at the implementation level with Next.js and Supabase code. Down to production pitfalls like memory leaks from forgotten unsubscribes and how auth ties into RLS.