Improved debugging for Expo apps with the React Native SDK

Summary

Expo applications generate approximately 75% of the total event volume received from React Native applications in Sentry. In response, Sentry updated its React Native SDK starting in version 8.10 to improve Expo debugging and performance monitoring workflows. The update automatically enriches events with Expo constants and over-the-air update context, including channels, runtime versions, and emergency launch warnings when an OTA update fails. Developers can track remote EAS Build lifecycle failures and successes using dedicated hooks configured in package.json. Performance instrumentation now supports span generation for Expo Router route prefetching as well as asset and image loading through wrapper functions around expo-image and expo-asset.

Context

Expo apps account for about 75% of React Native events in Sentry, but developers previously lacked out-of-the-box context for over-the-air update failures, EAS build errors, prefetch timings, and asset loading performance.

Approach / What changed

Sentry updated its React Native SDK (version 8.10) to automatically inject OTA update and Expo constant contexts, detect emergency launches, capture EAS Build lifecycle events via package.json scripts, and provide wrapper functions for Expo Router, expo-image, and expo-asset to capture performance spans.

Takeaways

• Sentry events automatically include OTA update metadata and tag emergency launches with warning-level events when Expo Updates falls back to an embedded bundle.
• EAS Build hooks allow developers to send remote build failure and success lifecycle events directly to Sentry with platform, profile, build ID, and git commit details.
• Wrapping Expo Router, expo-image, and expo-asset with SDK wrapper functions instruments route prefetching and asset loading with performance spans only when traces are active.

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