Getting MapLibre working for both native and web in Expo

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2025-01-07 02:30:13

I've been dabbling of late in building a mobile app with React Native + Expo. One of the things that attracted me most to Expo, is that – on top of the "write once, run on iOS and Android" claim of React Native – Expo claims to also let an app run seamlessly on the web. Anyway, as it turns out (surprise surprise – not!), neither of those claims are particularly aligned with reality. I found this out – with the claim of "run on native and web" – as soon as I wanted to add a simple map to my app.

Below is my humble lil' guide to getting MapLibre working for both native and web in Expo. Note: if you want to skip the step-by-step shpiel, and you just want a working example with all the code, feel free to head straight to the Expo MapLibre native + web demo on GitHub.

The simplest and the most recommended option is to use react-native-maps. This is the only solution that works with Expo Go, and it's the only one that's documented in the official Expo docs.