Android App White-Labeling

Prerequisites

• Make sure that you have the requirements outlined in the Mobile App White-Labeling guide.

• Android Studio (latest stable version).

• Node.js and yarn.

General setup

Rocket.Chat has build flavors to generate the official app versions. To see these flavors, navigate to android > app > src folder. Here you will find the following folders:

• official folders contain app icons and splash screens.

• main folder contains core implementations.

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

To build the app using debug and main folders:

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

• Change android:sharedUserId in ./android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml to a value unique to your app, such as your application ID. Android does not allow two apps with the same sharedUserId but different signing keys on the same device, so keeping the official value prevents your build from being installed alongside the official Rocket.Chat app.

  Set android:sharedUserId before your first release. This value cannot be changed for a published app, updating it later forces all existing users to uninstall and reinstall. Do not remove the attribute, change its value instead.

• Generate a new image asset for ic_notification .

• Generate a new image asset for ic_launcher .

• 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

Follow these steps to generate the Keystore for verifying your app on Google Play:

1. 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.

2. The command prompts you for some credentials.

   

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

Generate Android app on Firebase

1. Go to the project overview on Firebase.

2. Navigate to Settings > Project settings.

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

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

5. Download the google-services.json config file and move it to the src folder in the app folder in your project, as demonstrated in the screenshots below:

Run the app

To run the app, execute the following commands:

pnpm
pnpm android-whitelabel <YOURAPPID>

For example, the app created on this document would use:

pnpm android-whitelabel chat.rocket.whitelabel