NativeLaunch: Expo SDK 56 Update
NativeLaunch Team
6/24/2026
NativeLaunch has been updated to Expo SDK 56.
Both the Starter app and the UI Playground now run on Expo 56.0.12, React Native 0.85.3, and React 19.2.3. This is mostly an infrastructure update, but it brings several improvements that matter for day-to-day development: faster builds, faster Expo CLI workflows, newer React Native internals, and better defaults across the Expo ecosystem.
For the full official breakdown, Expo published two useful references:
What changed in Expo SDK 56
SDK 56 includes React Native 0.85 and React 19.2, plus a few upgrades that are especially relevant for production Expo apps:
- Expo UI is now production-ready: SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose APIs are stable, with new universal components across Android, iOS, and web.
- Native builds are faster: Expo now ships precompiled iOS packages for complex Expo modules, and EAS Build adds more build-time visibility.
- Expo CLI is faster: SDK 56 includes performance work across bundling, file crawling, and dev workflows.
- Hermes bytecode diffing is enabled by default: EAS Update can ship smaller update payloads by downloading binary patches instead of full bundles.
- Expo Router changed internally: it no longer depends on React Navigation, so projects that import directly from
@react-navigation/*should review the migration notes. - Expo Go for SDK 56 is not available from the App Store or Google Play yet: production projects should use development builds with
expo-dev-client.
There are also stable updates for Calendar, Contacts, MediaLibrary, iOS Widgets, expo-file-system, expo/fetch, typed config plugins, and more.
As always, this update is included for existing customers as part of lifetime access.
