When Your Rork App Gets ITMS-91053 — A Practical Guide to Privacy Manifests and Required Reason APIs
Submitting a Rork-generated Expo app to the App Store can trigger Privacy Manifest warnings even when you never wrote the offending code. Here is how to clear both Required Reason API and SDK manifest issues before you submit.
Win Back Lapsed Users with App Store In-App Events — Deep Link Implementation for Rork (Expo) Apps
An implementation memo on bringing lapsed users back to a Rork (Expo) app using App Store in-app events. Covers event card design, universal link routing, and measurement, from a solo developer's operational view.
You Only Get to Ask Once — Implementing a Notification Soft-Ask in Your Rork App to Lift Opt-In
On iOS, once a user denies the notification prompt you can never show it again. In a Rork (Expo) app, instead of firing the system prompt on launch, we add our own soft-ask screen and only request permission once the value has landed. Built with expo-notifications, covering Android 13 POST_NOTIFICATIONS, a recovery path after denial, and opt-in measurement.
Shipping Wallpaper Packs Without an App Review — Versioning and Delta Delivery for Remote Assets Across Six Apps
Re-submitting your app every time you add ten wallpapers grinds operations to a halt. Here is a manifest-based versioning scheme with delta downloads, cache invalidation, and rollback — with the implementation and measured transfer savings from running six apps in parallel.
Keeping a Rork-Built Expo App Ready for Kotlin Migration — Design Notes After Android Studio's Migration Agent Announcement
Android Studio's new agent can migrate React Native apps to native Kotlin. Here is how I restructured a Rork-built Expo app to stay migration-ready: a native dependency audit script, a portable core layer pattern, and a readiness checklist.
When Hiragana Doesn't Match Katakana — Japanese-Aware In-App Search for Rork Apps
A hiragana query silently missing katakana titles is a UX failure users never report. How I fixed Japanese search in my wallpaper app with NFKC normalization, kana folding, and precomputed search keys.
Android 17 Will Ignore Your Portrait Lock — Getting Rork-Built Expo Apps Ready for Large Screens Ahead of Time
Android 17 stops honoring orientation locks and resizability restrictions on large-screen devices. Here is how I assessed the impact on my Rork-built Expo apps, reworked the layouts, and verified everything with nothing but an emulator.
Building a Developer Debug Menu Into Your Rork App — Verify Ads, Purchases, and Remote Config Before Release
A production-safe developer debug menu for Rork apps — switch environments, force test ads, simulate entitlements, and override Remote Config, with working TypeScript code and the pitfalls I hit running six apps.
Adding a Home Screen Widget to a Rork App — Making WidgetKit Work Within Expo's Constraints
Rork generates Expo apps, and home screen widgets can't be written in React Native. Here's how to wire up WidgetKit with a config plugin and App Groups — including the parts that tripped me up.
Keeping a wallpaper app's binary small: moving images out of the bundle
Wallpaper apps bloat every time you add images. Here is where I draw the line between bundled and remote assets, how I keep first paint fast with prefetching, and the format work that cut transfer size to a third — with real numbers.
expo start --offline Says 'forbidden'? Corporate Proxy (403) vs Dependency Validation
Two different failures make 'expo start --offline' or EXPO_OFFLINE=1 die with 'forbidden': an HTTP 403 from a corporate proxy, and Expo CLI validateDependenciesVersions guard. How to tell them apart, when to set HTTP_PROXY to route through the proxy, and when to go fully offline with pre-generated caches instead.
Adding a Wallpaper Shuffle to the iOS 18 Control Center in a Rork App
A field guide to bolting an iOS 18 Control Center control (ControlWidget) onto a Rork-built React Native wallpaper app — App Group sharing, AppIntent, and the Expo config plugin that keeps it from breaking on every prebuild.