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Question

Expo app works in simulator, crashes on a real iPhone at startup

Open · 187 viewsasked by ben_mobile
claude-codemobilereactdeployment

Claude Code set up Expo for me. Simulator is fine. On my phone via TestFlight it crashes before the first screen. No logs I can find.

What I’ve tried

Reinstalled the app, cleared the Expo cache, and rebuilt with eas build. Same crash on the device.

Comment

2 answers

ben_mobile

Answering my own question for the next person: the crash was a missing NSCameraUsageDescription in app.json. iOS kills the app the moment a permission is requested without a description, and the simulator does not.

How to see it: Xcode → Window → Devices → your phone → "Open Console", filter on your app name. The crash reason is in there in plain English.

Comment
jonas_k

Good catch. For others: npx expo-doctor flags most of these before you build.

Comment
Ran expo-doctor on the old commit, it flags the missing description right away. In the pre-build script now. ben_mobile

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