Sandbox your React Native development Expo CLI is a tool to install and run React Native applications. Expo is a toolchain that claims to be “the fastest way to build an app”. You can install those tools on your local machine. But maybe you want to create a stand-alone development environment using Docker containers. That way you can be sure of a consistent development environment across different machines.

Today I learned about Expo, a toolkit/SDK for React Native development. Expo makes it easy to bootstrap a React Native code-base without having to install Android Studio or other tool-chains. Node.js and npm (or yarn) are the only requirements. Install via npm install expo-cli --global. Create a new project: expo init myProject && cd myProject expo start This will open up a browser window (“Expo Client”). Here you can open a new emulator, even a web emulator.