Follow the below steps to create an apk using expo cli

Install expo CLI To check if you have expo CLI install run

expo -V

you need the eas build tools

npm install --global expo-cli eas-cli

First requirement for generating the apk file is creating an expo account. Create an account here

Login to expo CLI

• Open cmd

• Login to expo account using the command :

• expo login

By default the eas build tool will give you a playstore build file.

If you want a .apk file you need to create a eas.json file and add a buildType as apk

 {
  "build": {
    "preview": {
      "android": {
        "buildType": "apk"
      }
    },
    "preview2": {
      "android": {
        "gradleCommand": ":app:assembleRelease"
      }
    },
    "preview3": {
      "developmentClient": true
    },
    "production": {}
  }
}

You can check out more about the eas build tool here.

Build

Open cmd in your app directory.

Run the build command

eas build -p android --profile preview

Download apk

After the build is complete you can go to the builds section in your expo dashboard and download the apk.

https://expo.dev/accounts/username/projects/projectname/builds/0cecd3ee-41aa-4a5a-9cc7-6f7b3ea6fc52

make sure in app.json

{
  "expo": {
    "name": "your app name",
    "description": "your app desc",
    ....,
    "ios": {
      "supportsTablet": true
    },
    
    "android": {
      "package": "com.yourcompany.yourappname"
    }
  }
}

then run expo build:android or expo ba

after that

run expo build:status you'll find, something like this, the Apk's is hosted on amazon aws

[exp] Android:
[exp] APK: https://HOST/yourapp.apk

to build a apk out of the file first you need to do some changes to your eas.json file.

By default, EAS Build produces Android App Bundle, you can change it by:

• setting buildType to apk
• setting developmentClient to true
• setting gradleCommand to :app:assembleRelease, :app:assembleDebug or any othergradle command that produces APK

after changing the config you can run eas build -p android --profile preview to build the application

you can read more about this in docs https://docs.expo.dev/build-reference/apk/

and here's a sample config i used for a basic project to build ( also you can find on docs )

{
  "cli": {
    "version": ">= 0.52.0"
  },
  "build": {
    "preview": {
      "android": {
        "buildType": "apk"
      }
    },
    "preview2": {
      "android": {
        "gradleCommand": ":app:assembleRelease"
      }
    },
    "preview3": {
      "developmentClient": true
    },
    "production": {}
  }
}

--

also alternatively another possible way would be to get the bundle ( .aab ) file and convert it to apk using a too like bundletool. and you can find the apk ( universal.apk ) inside app.apks

bundletool build-apks --bundle=bundle.aab --output=app.apks --mode=universal 

https://github.com/google/bundletool