Internal distribution

Learn how EAS Build provides shareable URLs for your builds with your team for internal distribution.

For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt. Use this file to discover all available pages.

Setting up an internal distribution build only takes a few minutes with EAS Build and provides a streamlined way to share your app with your team and other testers for feedback. It does this by providing a URL that allows them to install the app directly to their device. If you are not sure yet if you want to use this approach and want to learn about all of the options available for distributing your app internally, refer to the overview of distribution apps for review guide.

Using internal distribution

To configure a build profile for internal distribution, set "distribution": "internal" on it. When you set this configuration, it has the following effects on the build profile:

• Android: The default behavior for the gradleCommand will change to generate an APK instead of an AAB. If you have specified a custom gradleCommand, then make sure that it produces an APK, or it won't be directly installable on an Android device. Additionally, EAS Build will generate a new Android keystore for signing the APK, or it will use an existing one if the package name is the same as your development build.
• iOS: Builds using this profile will use either ad hoc or enterprise provisioning. When using ad hoc provisioning, EAS Build will generate a provisioning profile containing an allow-list of device UDIDs, and only those devices in the list at build time will be able to install it. You can add a device by running eas device:create and creating a new build.
• By default, internal distribution build URLs are available to anybody with the URL, and each is identified by a 32 character UUID. If you would like to require sign-in to an authorized Expo account to access these builds, you can disable the Unauthenticated access to internal builds option in your project settings.

See the tutorial on Internal distribution with EAS Build below for more information on how to configure, create, and install a build:

Automation on CI (optional)

You can run internal distribution builds non-interactively in CI with the --non-interactive flag. Learn more about triggering builds from CI.

For iOS ad hoc builds, eas build --non-interactive reuses a valid provisioning profile without updating its device list. The build can succeed, but the app may not install on registered devices added after the profile was last updated.

Pass --refresh-ad-hoc-provisioning-profile with --non-interactive to update the Expo-managed ad hoc provisioning profile on the Apple Developer Portal before the build.

--refresh-ad-hoc-provisioning-profile requires EAS CLI 19.1.0 or later.

EAS authenticates with an App Store Connect API key. It reads devices registered on EAS for your Apple team. It registers any missing UDIDs on the portal. Then it refreshes the profile device list.

When you use this flag, EAS selects all matching devices for the build target's Apple platform: iPhone and iPad for iOS, Mac for macOS.

For EAS Workflows, set refresh_ad_hoc_provisioning_profile: true in the build job's params with the same profile requirements. See the build job parameters.

The profile must set "distribution": "internal" and use credentials managed by EAS. You need at least one device from eas device:create and an App Store Connect API key in CI through environment variables (EXPO_ASC_API_KEY_PATH, EXPO_ASC_KEY_ID, and EXPO_ASC_ISSUER_ID) or a key stored in EAS for submissions on the project.

Otherwise, after registering a device with eas device:create, run eas build interactively and sign in with your Apple account so EAS can update the ad hoc provisioning profile.

Managing devices

With EAS Workflows, you can pause a workflow until a tester enrolls an iOS device and a team member approves it using the apple-device-registration-request job. Pair it with a build job that sets refresh_ad_hoc_provisioning_profile: true to include the new device in an internal distribution build.

You can see any devices registered via eas device:create by running:

Devices registered with Expo for ad hoc provisioning will appear on your Apple Developer Portal after they are used to generate a provisioning profile for a new internal build with EAS Build or to resign an existing build with eas build:resign.

Remove devices

If a device is no longer in use, it can be removed from this list by running:

This command will also prompt you to disable the device on the Apple Developer Portal. Disabled devices still count against Apple's limit of 100 devices for ad hoc distribution per app.

Rename devices

Devices added via the website URL/QR code will default to displaying their UDID when selecting them for an EAS Build. You can assign friendly names to your devices with the following command:

Overview of distribution mechanisms

The following are the different mechanisms for distributing your app to devices supported by internal distribution.