How to update version number of react native app

For those wanting to automate this, and have iOS at the same time, you can use react-native-version to set the version numbers.

All you need to do is update your version number inside the package.json file and run the following:

$ npx react-native-version --never-amend

[RNV] Versioning Android...
[RNV] Android updated
[RNV] Versioning iOS...
[RNV] iOS updated
[RNV] Done
✨  Done in 0.39s.

I hope this can help others.

@Joseph Roque is correct, you need to update the version numbers in android/app/build.gradle.

Here's how I automate this and tie it into the package's version in package.json and git commits.

In android/app/build.gradle:

/* Near the top */

import groovy.json.JsonSlurper

def getNpmVersion() {
    def inputFile = new File("../package.json")
    def packageJson = new JsonSlurper().parseText(inputFile.text)
    return packageJson["version"]
}
/* calculated from git commits to give sequential integers */
def getGitVersion() {
    def process = "git rev-list master --first-parent --count".execute()
    return process.text.toInteger()
}


......


def userVer = getNpmVersion()
def googleVer = getGitVersion()

android {
...
    defaultConfig {
        .....
        versionCode googleVer
        versionName userVer

        ndk {
            abiFilters "armeabi-v7a", "x86"
        }
    }

Notes:

• It's important that versionCode is an integer - so we can't use semantic versioning here. This is used on the play store to tell which versions come after others - that's why it's tied to git commits in getGitVersion

• versionName however is shown to users - I'm using semantic versioning here and storing the real value in my package.json. Thanks to https://medium.com/@andr3wjack/versioning-react-native-apps-407469707661

You should be changing your versionCode and versionName in android/app/build.gradle:

android {

    defaultConfig {

        versionCode 1
        versionName "1.0"
        
        {...}
    }

    {...}
}

Note that versionCode has to be in an integer that is larger than the ones used for previous releases while versionName is the human readable version that may be shown to users.