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●GPT-6.1 SOL — Added to Rork's model menu (09-29) with Low, Medium and High effort; included on Pro and Max●SONNET 5.5 — Claude Sonnet 5.5 is selectable: strong at UI design and faster than Sonnet 5 (09-28)●SONNET 4.5 — Retires on the Claude API on 11/30, 27 days left. If your app calls it, check the migration target●SDK 58 — Moves to React Native 0.88. R8 is now on by default in Android release builds, and iOS prebuild generates a SceneDelegate●OBSERVE — EAS Observe now records native crashes too (SDK 57.0.21 or later, 10/07)●NEW — My App Open Ad Only Showed When the App…●GPT-6.1 SOL — Added to Rork's model menu (09-29) with Low, Medium and High effort; included on Pro and Max●SONNET 5.5 — Claude Sonnet 5.5 is selectable: strong at UI design and faster than Sonnet 5 (09-28)●SONNET 4.5 — Retires on the Claude API on 11/30, 27 days left. If your app calls it, check the migration target●SDK 58 — Moves to React Native 0.88. R8 is now on by default in Android release builds, and iOS prebuild generates a SceneDelegate●OBSERVE — EAS Observe now records native crashes too (SDK 57.0.21 or later, 10/07)●NEW — My App Open Ad Only Showed When the App…
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Advanced guides with production-ready code

Thank you for visiting Rork Lab. We publish advanced guides daily with copy-paste ready code, benchmarks, and production design patterns — practical content we hope you'll find useful as the next step after our free articles.

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PREMIUM ARTICLES

Premium Articles

499 exclusive articles
PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-30Advanced

Adding Home-Screen Quick Actions to a Rork App — dynamic items without cold-launch drops

How to implement the long-press quick actions on a Rork (Expo) app icon. Covers static vs dynamic items, the iOS/Android differences, and the cold-launch problem where the action arrives before the router is ready — solved with a hold-and-replay design.

PREMIUM◇ App Dev/2026-06-30Intermediate

Previewing Files In-App in Rork — calling Quick Look safely from Expo

How to preview PDFs, images, and Office documents in place without sending users out of your app, using Quick Look (QLPreviewController) from Rork (Expo). Covers pre-downloading remote files, the local-URL requirement, the Android FileProvider alternative, and handling the share button.

PREMIUM⟐ Business/2026-06-30Intermediate

Adding App Store Promoted In-App Purchases to a Rork App

How to list purchases on your App Store product page and carry a buyer straight into your in-app purchase flow. Covers receiving deferred purchases that arrive before the app is launched or the user is signed in, with implementation for both react-native-iap and StoreKit 2.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-30Advanced

Building StandBy-Optimized Widgets in Rork Max

A hands-on walkthrough for tuning WidgetKit widgets for StandBy mode, the landscape charging display in iOS 17+. Covers always-on dimming, night mode, and container backgrounds, including which parts of Rork Max's generated code you still have to finish by hand.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-29Advanced

Adding a keyboard toolbar to Rork text inputs — unifying iOS InputAccessoryView and an Android bar into one component

How to add a toolbar pinned above the keyboard — a Done button or quick-insert actions — to the React Native app Rork generates. The iOS InputAccessoryView and a hand-built Android bar, folded into one reusable component, with working code.

PREMIUM◇ App Dev/2026-06-29Intermediate

Clipboard UX in Expo apps — copy and paste without flooding users with iOS's paste banner

When you wire up copy and paste with expo-clipboard, iOS's paste permission banner can fire constantly and quietly erode trust. Here's exactly when the banner appears, and how hasStringAsync lets you gate a Paste button without ever reading the contents.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-29Advanced

Handling iOS Limited Photo Library Access in a Rork (Expo) App

Handle iOS limited photo library access (selected photos only) correctly in a Rork (Expo) app. Covers the three states of full / limited / denied, designing a screen that works from the selected subset, and a path to add more photos, all with working code.

PREMIUM◇ App Dev/2026-06-29Advanced

Respecting Metered Connections and Low Data Mode in an Image-Heavy Rork App

In an image-heavy Rork (Expo) app, hold back prefetching on metered connections and Low Data Mode. Read the connection's character from NetInfo details, drop image quality, and defer prefetch with an adaptive policy layer, all with working code.

PREMIUM⟐ Business/2026-06-29Intermediate

Designing a Referral System Without a Heavy Backend

Add a referral program to your Rork (Expo) app without standing up a fleet of servers. Covers code generation, deferred deep-link attribution on first launch, idempotent reward fulfillment that never double-pays, and basic guards against self-referral and device farming, all with working code.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-29Advanced

When a New Architecture Migration Only Janks in Release Builds — Field Notes on Catching Silent Interop-Layer Fallback

A Rork app on the New Architecture scrolled fine in development but stuttered only in release builds on real devices. The cause: a legacy native module quietly falling back to the interop layer. Field notes on measuring it and rolling out a fix without reverting the whole app.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-29Advanced

Rork × Vision Camera v4: A Production-Grade Camera Stack with QR, OCR, and ML Inference

Wire React Native Vision Camera v4 into a Rork project end-to-end — frame processors, ML inference, QR/OCR, plus battery and thermal tuning, a real-device test matrix, store review, and a staged rollout.

PREMIUM⟐ Business/2026-06-29Advanced

How far Rork Companion's free device testing goes — and when to pay the $99 Apple Developer Program

Rork Companion lets you test on a real device without a paid Apple Developer account. Here is exactly where the free path stops, the concrete triggers for paying the $99, and what to stage before your first signed build — from running six apps as an indie developer.

PREMIUM◇ App Dev/2026-06-28Advanced

Design On-Device Core ML So Cold Start and Heat Don't Break It

Put on-device Core ML in the native Swift that Rork Max generates and you hit two walls before accuracy: the first inference is slow, and the device heats up and slows down. Here is a design built around cold start and a thermal budget, with working Swift.

PREMIUM◇ App Dev/2026-06-28Advanced

Building a Live Barcode and Text Scanner in Rork Max with VisionKit's DataScanner

Add a live barcode and text scanner to your Rork Max native Swift app using VisionKit's DataScanner. Covers the SwiftUI bridge, availability handling, throttling repeated detections, and on-device verification with working code.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-28Advanced

Ship EAS Updates to a Few First, and Halt Automatically on Crash Rate

Because OTA updates reach everyone instantly, a bad update reaches everyone instantly too. Here is a three-layer design: ship EAS Update to a small canary, decide expand-or-halt from crash-free rate automatically, and hold a safety net on the device — with working code.

PREMIUM⟐ Business/2026-06-28Advanced

Don't Pay Out a Rewarded Ad on the Client's Word Alone — SSV Verification for a Rork (Expo) App on a Worker

Trusting the client-side 'reward earned' callback alone invites double-grants and spoofing. Here is how to wire AdMob server-side verification (SSV) into a Rork-generated Expo app, verify the signed callback on a Cloudflare Worker, and make payouts idempotent with transaction_id.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-28Advanced

When your Rork app's production crashes arrive minified — wiring Hermes source maps and debug IDs into Sentry

Rork-generated Expo apps run on Hermes, so production crashes often arrive as index.bundle:1:284913 with no function names. Here is how to wire Hermes source maps and debug IDs into Sentry so your stack traces become readable.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-28Advanced

Build Your Settings Screen From One Schema and Reuse It Across Apps

Hand-building a settings screen per app falls apart as your app count grows. Here is a schema-driven design that assembles the screen from declarative data and shares a common base across multiple apps, with working code.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-27Advanced

Before a Free Preview Walks Out via Screenshot: Detecting Screenshots and Screen Recording in Rork/Expo

How to protect paid preview images from screenshots and screen recording in a Rork/Expo app: the limits of expo-screen-capture, native isCaptured monitoring, and an iOS/Android-aware blur design.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-27Intermediate

When Your App's Launch Got Quietly Slower Release After Release — Field Notes on TTI Instrumentation and a Startup Budget for Rork Apps

Rork apps tend to start fast on day one, then drift slower as you add features and SDKs. These field notes show how to catch cold-start regressions that averages hide, trace them to a release, and stop the drift with a CI startup budget.

PREMIUM◇ App Dev/2026-06-27Intermediate

Show the In-App 'What's New' Once, Without Nagging — Version Gating and Seen State

An in-app 'What's New' screen that fires on fresh installs or shows every launch gets users annoyed. Here is a version-gated, seen-state design that delivers it exactly once to people who updated — in real Rork (Expo) code, plus a shape you reuse across multiple apps.

PREMIUM◇ App Dev/2026-06-27Advanced

When a User Rewinds the Clock, Today's Card Shouldn't Break — Day Boundaries and Streak Integrity in a Daily-Content App

Daily 'card of the day' content breaks under timezone travel and manual clock changes, showing duplicates, gaps, or lost streaks. Here is a deterministic day-key and monotonic-clock design, in real Rork (Expo) code, that keeps it solid.

PREMIUM◇ App Dev/2026-06-27Intermediate

Your Animation Keeps Running After You Leave the Screen — Focus-Aware Battery Savings in a Rork (Expo) App

In a Rork-generated Expo app, a gradient or breathing animation can keep running after you push another screen or background the app, quietly draining the battery without ever surfacing as jank. The cause is that Reanimated's withRepeat lives on the UI thread and the navigation stack keeps screens mounted. This shows a lifecycle design — useIsFocused plus AppState — that reliably stops off-screen and background loops, with working code.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-27Intermediate

Catch Real-Device Bugs Before You Ship: A Pre-Submission Checklist for Rork Share Links

Rork's editor preview runs in an ideal environment, so it hides bugs that only appear on real hardware. Here are the seven device differences to clear before you hand out a share link, in the order to check them, with the code to set up first.

PREMIUM◉ AI Models/2026-06-27Intermediate

Monetizing a Rork-Built App — Choosing Between Ads, Subscriptions, and Freemium

How to monetize an app built with Rork — from choosing between ads, subscriptions, freemium, and one-time purchase to the implementation details. Phased AdMob formats, treating ad-free as a single source of truth, and price anchoring, written from the indie-developer trenches.

PREMIUM◇ App Dev/2026-06-27Advanced

Your Arabic Users See an Unmirrored Layout — RTL in a Rork (Expo) App and the Reload Trap

You added Arabic to a Rork-generated Expo app, but the screen never flips and the back button stays on the wrong side. The cause is that I18nManager.forceRTL requires a relaunch. This walks through detecting direction with expo-localization, applying it reliably with Updates.reloadAsync, swapping to marginStart, and mirroring only the arrows — all with working code.

PREMIUM◇ App Dev/2026-06-27Intermediate

Building Production-Ready iOS Apps with Rork

Rork generates Expo / React Native apps. A practical look at architecture, surfacing crashes in production, list performance, the eas submit workflow, and the iOS review pitfalls to clear — learned from real review round-trips.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-26Advanced

Keep Your Rork App's Review From Stalling on a Privacy Manifest Gap

Handle PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy and Required Reason APIs in a Rork Expo app — a common cause of App Store review stalls — covering app.config.ts setup, collected-data declarations, third-party SDK checks, and a pre-submission verification script.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-26Intermediate

Watermark Only the Shared Image in Your Rork Wallpaper App

In a Rork-generated Expo wallpaper or image app, keep saved images untouched and burn a watermark only into the share export, shown two ways — react-native-view-shot and Skia — with the resolution-loss pitfalls to avoid.

PREMIUM⬡ Dev Tools/2026-06-26Advanced

Show Your Rork App's Progress on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island

Add Live Activities and ActivityKit to a Swift app generated by Rork Max so a meditation timer or delivery status appears on the lock screen and Dynamic Island, with working code and the submission gotchas to watch for.