Firebase project

Create a Firebase project

First things first, you need to create a Firebase project. You can do this by going to the Firebase console and clicking on "Add Project":

Name it as you want, and proceed to the dashboard.

Install Firebase SDK

To install React Native Firebase's base app module, run the following command in your mobile app directory:

npx expo install @react-native-firebase/app

Configure Firebase modules

The recommended approach to configure React Native Firebase is to use Expo Config Plugins.

To enable Firebase on the native Android and iOS platforms, create and download Service Account files for each platform from your Firebase project.

You can find them in the dashboard under the Firebase project settings:

For Android, it will be a google-services.json file, and for iOS it will be a GoogleService-Info.plist file.

Then provide paths to the downloaded files in the following app.config.ts fields: android.googleServicesFile and ios.googleServicesFile. This is how an example configuration looks like:

export default ({ config }: ConfigContext): ExpoConfig => ({
  ...config,
  ios: {
    googleServicesFile: "./GoogleService-Info.plist",
  },
  android: {
    googleServicesFile: "./google-services.json",
  },
  plugins: [
    "@react-native-firebase/app",
    [
      "expo-build-properties",
      {
        ios: {
          useFrameworks: "static",
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
});

Listing a module in the Config Plugins (the plugins array in the config above) is only required for React Native Firebase modules that involve native installation steps - e.g. modifying the Xcode project, Podfile, build.gradle, AndroidManifest.xml etc. React Native Firebase modules without native steps will work out of the box.

Generate native code

If you are compiling your app locally, you'll need to regenerate the native code for the platforms to pick up the changes:

npx expo prebuild --clean

Then, you could follow the same steps as in the development environment setup guide to run the app locally or build a production version of your app.