react-native: Documentation missing instructions for running on device via static bundle

If anyone wants to improve on these instructions and add them to the docs, feel free, I can do it later if nobody else jumps on it - I just wanted to document it somewhere for now.

Open iOS/AppDelegate.m
Comment out jsCodeLocation = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://localhost:8081/index.ios.bundle"];
Uncomment jsCodeLocation = [[NSBundle mainBundle] URLForResource:@"main" withExtension:@"jsbundle"];
Start up the packager with npm start and then run curl http://localhost:8081/index.ios.bundle -o main.jsbundle - if this fails (as it did on my machine) add the --ipv4 flag to the end of it.
In XCode, right click on your project directory and click Add Files to "Project Name Here" - choose the main.jsbundle file that you generated.

You can now run the app on a device (either via usb or TestFlight) without needing to have a server running.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 9 years ago
Reactions: 45
Comments: 35 (9 by maintainers)

Links to this issue

ios - React Native on Ipad - Error - could not connect to development server - Stack Overflow

Commits related to this issue

[ReactNative] Make it easier to generate offline bundles Summary: This helps generating offline bundles by adding almost empty main.jsbundle to the app. The only thing left is to fetch minified bundl... — committed to vjeux/react-native by frantic 9 years ago

Most upvoted comments

Currently (react-native@0.43), the AppDelegate.m is different. We can follow steps bellow:

Comment the original jsCodeLocation line and add the new one:

/*jsCodeLocation = [[RCTBundleURLProvider sharedSettings] 
jsBundleURLForBundleRoot:@"index.ios" fallbackResource:nil];*/
jsCodeLocation = [[NSBundle mainBundle] URLForResource:@"main" withExtension:@"jsbundle"];

Run react-native bundle --platform ios --dev false --entry-file index.ios.js --bundle-output main.jsbundle at root dir. And you will get two files: main.jsbundle and main.jsbundle.meta.
Right click your project and select Add Files to "yourProject" in Xcode, select main.jsbundle you created with step 2.

Then build the app and you can run it in your device.

creeperyang on Apr 27, 2017

I have a issue! Is possible to run my react native app on iPad with Xcode 8.3 without having the usb cable connected?

UtenteBello on Jul 3, 2017

I’m doing this with a pre-existing swift codebase. Using let jsCodeLocation = NSBundle.mainBundle().URLForResource("main", withExtension: "jsbundle") inside AppDelegate.swift works

dgilliam on Jun 9, 2016

FYI. The instructions are “available” @ https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/master/Examples/SampleApp/iOS/AppDelegate.m#L31

But I def had to add the step:

In XCode, right click on your project directory and click Add Files to “Project Name Here”
choose the main.jsbundle file that you generated via curl command.

bradoyler on Mar 29, 2015