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Expo Managed Workflow

This documentation shows how to use our SDK with your Expo Managed Workflow application.

If you are using the Bare Workflow, please review the React Native + Expo SDK Setup instead.

Requirements

• OneSignal Account
• OneSignal App ID, available in Settings > Keys & IDs

iOS requirements

• iOS 11+ or iPadOS 11+ device (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) to test on. Xcode 14+ simulator works running iOS 16+
• mac with Xcode 12+
• p8 Authentication Token or p12 Push Notification Certificate
• Your app.json or eas.json or app.config.js file needs the iOS bundleIdentifier property set. See Expo > Configure development and production variants.

Android requirements

• Android 5.0+ device or emulator with "Google Play Store (Services)" installed
• Set up your Android Firebase Credentials

Amazon & Huawei requirements

Follow these instructions if your app is distributed on the Amazon AppStore and/or the Huawei AppGallery.

• Generate an Amazon API Key
• Huawei Unity SDK Setup

1. Add the OneSignal package to your app

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OneSignal Expo sample app

Sample repo containing the sample app for running OneSignal with Expo.

Make sure you have the Expo CLI installed on your computer.

1.1 Install the OneSignal Expo plugin using the Expo CLI

npx expo install onesignal-expo-plugin

1.2 Install the SDK using Yarn or NPM

• Yarn: yarn add react-native-onesignal
• NPM npm install --save react-native-onesignal

1.3 Configure your app.json/app.config.js
Add the plugin to the plugin array:

app.json

{
  "plugins": [
    [
      "onesignal-expo-plugin",
      {
        "mode": "development",
      }
    ]
  ]
}

or

app.config.js

export default {
  ...
  plugins: [
    [
      "onesignal-expo-plugin",
      {
        mode: "development",
      }
    ]
  ]
};

Plugin Prop
You can pass props to the plugin config object to configure:

1.4 Adding the OneSignal App ID

Add your OneSignal App ID to your Expo constants via the extra param:

{
  "extra": {
    "oneSignalAppId": "<YOUR APP ID HERE>"
  }
}

You can then access the value to pass to the initialize function:

import { LogLevel, OneSignal } from 'react-native-onesignal';
import Constants from "expo-constants";

OneSignal.Debug.setLogLevel(LogLevel.Verbose);
OneSignal.initialize(Constants.expoConfig.extra.oneSignalAppId);

// Also need enable notifications to complete OneSignal setup
OneSignal.Notifications.requestPermission(true);

Alternatively, pass the OneSignal app ID directly to the function:

OneSignal.initialize("YOUR-ONESIGNAL-APP-ID");

1.5 Run your Expo app

You need to create a development build for your app.

$ npx expo prebuild

# Build your native iOS project
$ npx expo run:ios

# Build your native Android project
$ npx expo run:android

2. Testing

Run your app on a physical device to make sure it builds correctly.

If you used the provided code, then the requestPermission method, should prompt you to subscribe to push notifications. You can always change this later but for now, click "Allow" to subscribe to push notifications.

Check your OneSignal Dashboard Audience > Subscriptions to see your Subscription and click the options button on the left to set yourself as a Test Subscription.

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Troubleshooting

If running into issues, see our Mobile Troubleshooting Guide.

Try our example projects on our Github repository.

If stuck, contact support directly or email [email protected] for help.

For faster assistance, please provide:

• Your OneSignal App ID
• Details, logs, and/or screenshots of the issue.
• Steps to reproduce

Users & subscriptions

Required if using integrations.
Recommended for messaging across multiple channels (push, email, sms).

If you need user consent before tracking their data. OneSignal provides user consent methods to help delay initialization of our SDK until consent is provided. See Handling Personal Data for details.

External ID & aliases

When a user downloads and opens your mobile app or uninstalls and re-installs your app on the same device, a Subscription and a User is created within the OneSignal app.

You can identify that user across multiple subscriptions by setting the External ID property. The External ID should be distinct user ID representing a single user. We recommend using the same user ID as in your Integrations or main analytics tool.

When you authenticate users in your app, call our login method at any time to link this subscription to a user.

let externalId = "123456789" // You will supply the external id to the OneSignal SDK
OneSignal.login(externalId);

Our mobile SDKs have methods for detecting User state changes that might be helpful for internal tracking.

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External ID & custom aliases

If your users have multiple user IDs, we do support additional custom Aliases. However, you should still always set the External ID as this is the main alias we use to identify users. See Users for details.

Add email and phone number subscriptions

Recommended if using email and SMS messaging.

Like push subscriptions, email addresses and phone numbers each are a new subscription within OneSignal. Your email and sms subscriptions will be tied to the same user if created using our SDK or if you setting the External ID. You can Import your current user data and use our APIs and/or SDK methods to capture new email addresses and phone numbers when provided to you by your users.

// Pass in email provided by customer
OneSignal.User.addEmail("[email protected]");

// Pass in phone number provided by customer
OneSignal.User.addSms("+11234567890");

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Users & subscriptions

See Users and Subscriptions for more details.

Property & event tags

Tags are custom key : value pairs of String data used for tracking any custom user events and properties. Setting tags is required for more complex Segments and Message Personalization.

For event triggered messages, use tags with Time Operators to note the date and time the event is/occurred and setup automations for sending to those users. See Abandoned Cart Example for details.

OneSignal.User.addTag("key", "value");

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Data tags

If you want to store custom data within OneSignal for segmentation, message personalization, and event triggered automation, see Tags for details.

Importing users and subscriptions

If you have a list of user data from a previous source, you can import it into OneSignal following our Import guides.

Message configuration

Common setup items to get the most of your integration.

Deep linking

See our Deep Linking guide to set those up for push and other messaging channels.

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Basic SDK setup complete!

For details on the above methods and other methods available, see our Mobile SDK reference.