From iOS to Android: Releasing MPLS Coffee Across Platforms

After a few weeks of development, I shipped the initial build of MPLS Coffee to the iOS App Store. The process wasn’t entirely smooth—there were a few minor map bugs that needed fixing before the app was ready for launch. After ironing out those issues, a few updates later, I was ready to submit it.

Building the app with Expo made the release process relatively straightforward. Using Expo's EAS build and EAS submit allowed me build and submit all using Expo's servers and go directly to the App Store. This process is so much easier than what used to be a tedious process of configuring my local environment.

With the iOS app live in the App Store, I'm focusing on deploying the Android version to the Google Play Store. My old Google Developer Account expired and with no way of re-activating the account, I had to create a new one. That process took a couple of days to get through the verification process.

Since this is a new developer account, I needed to also create a new Google Service Account Key if I was going to use EAS submit. The Google Service Account Key is a JSON file that includes security tokens, credentials, and keys. This key allows your app to communicate with Google's API. After creating the key, I linked it to my Google App project in the Google App console, allowing Google to verify the key and grant the necessary permissions to access resources on behalf of the app.

Once the key was set up, EAS submit uses this key file to authenticate the submission process.

First-Time Builds: Manual Submissions

One thing to note—because this was the first build of the app, I couldn’t automate the process completely. I had to do a manual EAS build, download the APK, and then manually upload the file to the Play Store for the initial submission.

So that's how far I've come with MPLS Coffee. My next steps are to update the Google Play Store listing and submit the Android version.

Stay tuned—I'm excited to get both versions live!