Android App White Labeling

General Setup

• Like iOS, we have build flavors to generate our Official, Experimental, and F-Droid app versions.

  • experimental and official folders contain app icons and splash screens.

  • play and foss folders contain the necessary code to run the app with or without Google Play services.

    • foss build doesn't contain push notifications implemented.

  • main folder contains core implementations.

  • debug folder contains code to run the app in debug mode.

  To build the Experimental app using experimental, play debug, and main folders,

• Set APPLICATION_ID, VERSIONCODE and BugsnagAPIKey on ./android/gradle.properties

• Generate a new image asset for ic_notification and target main.

• Generate a new image asset for ic_launcher and target experimental.

• Splash screen uses the same asset as the ic_launcher ,and you can change the background on splashBackground.

• Change the app name and share the extension name on ./android/app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml

Generate Upload Key

To generate the Keystore for verifying your app on Google Play,

• Run the following commands:

cd android/app

keytool -genkeypair -v -keystore my-upload-key.keystore -alias my-key-alias -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

To learn more about generating an upload key in ReactNative, see the official documentation.

• The command prompts you for some credentials.

• Set KEYSTORE_PASSWORD and KEY_PASSWORD on ./android/gradle.properties with the passwords you were prompted for.

Generating Android app on Firebase

• Go to the project overview on Firebase.

• Navigate to Settings > Project settings.

• On the General tab, click on Add app under Your apps.

• Enter your bundle ID as the Android package name and click Register app.

• Download the config file and move it as instructed.

Running the app

• To run the app, execute these commands:

yarn

yarn android-whitelabel <YOURAPPID>

For example, the app created on this document would use

yarn android-whitelabel chat.rocket.whitelabel

This script uses experimentalPlayDebug build flavor. When you build your app on release mode, use experimentalPlayRelease. See the official documentation for more info.