Could not connect to React Native development server on Android

Question

In my case the problem was with Android security policies. According to the documentation:

Starting with Android 9.0 (API level 28), cleartext support is disabled by default.

But the application tries to access Metro Bundler through HTTP, right? And that's why it can't. In order to enable cleartext traffic, open your AndroidManifest.xml and add android:usesCleartextTraffic="true" to <application> node.

For example:

<application
    android:name="com.example.app"
    android:allowBackup="false"
    android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher"
    android:label="@string/app_name"
    android:theme="@style/AppTheme"
    android:usesCleartextTraffic="true">

You can find more solutions in this SO: https://stackoverflow.com/a/50834600/1673320. OP's problem is different, but similar.

From the Docs: http://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/running-on-device.html#method-2-connect-via-wi-fi

Method 2: Connect via Wi-Fi

You can also connect to the development server over Wi-Fi. You'll
first need to install the app on your device using a USB cable, but
once that has been done you can debug wirelessly by following these
instructions. You'll need your development machine's current IP
address before proceeding.

Open a terminal and type /sbin/ifconfig to find your machine's IP address.

1. Make sure your laptop and your phone are on the same Wi-Fi network.
2. Open your React Native app on your device.
3. You'll see a red screen with an error. This is OK. The following steps will fix that.
4. Open the in-app Developer menu.
5. Go to Dev Settings → Debug server host for device.
6. Type in your machine's IP address and the port of the local dev server (e.g. 10.0.1.1:8081).
7. Go back to the Developer menu and select Reload JS.

Run this and it worked for me

adb reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081

Starting with Android 9.0 (API level 28), cleartext support is disabled by default. we can use android:usesCleartextTraffic="true" this will work but this is not recommended solution. For Permanent and recommended Solution is below:

Step 1 : create a file in android folder app/src/debug/res/xml/network_security_config.xml

Step 2 : add this to network_security_config.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<network-security-config>
  <!-- deny cleartext traffic for React Native packager ips in release -->
  <domain-config cleartextTrafficPermitted="true">
   <domain includeSubdomains="true">localhost</domain>
   <domain includeSubdomains="true">10.0.2.2</domain>
   <domain includeSubdomains="true">10.0.3.2</domain>
  </domain-config>
</network-security-config>

Step 3 : Apply the config to your AndroidManifest.xml

<application
 android:networkSecurityConfig="@xml/network_security_config">
</application>

This is applicable to Android 9.0+ according to the Network Security Configuration. Well, so after trying all possible solutions I found on the web, I decided to investigate the native Android logcat manually. Even after adding android:usesCleartextTraffic="true", I found this in the logcat:

06-25 02:32:34.561 32001 32001 E unknown:ReactNative: Caused by: java.net.UnknownServiceException: CLEARTEXT communication to 192.168.29.96 not permitted by network security policy

So, I tried to inspect my react-native app's source. I found that in debug variant, there is already a network-security-config which is defined by react-native guys, that conflicts with the main variant.

There's an easy solution to this. Go to <app-src>/android/app/src/debug/res/xml/react_native_config.xml Add a new line with your own IP address in the like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<network-security-config>
  <domain-config cleartextTrafficPermitted="true">
    <domain includeSubdomains="false">localhost</domain>
    <domain includeSubdomains="false">10.0.2.2</domain>
    <domain includeSubdomains="false">10.0.3.2</domain>
    ***<domain includeSubdomains="false">192.168.29.96</domain>***
  </domain-config>
</network-security-config>

As my computer's local IP (check from ifconfig for linux) is 192.168.29.96, I added the above line in ***

Then, you need to clean and rebuild for Android!

cd <app-src>/android
./gradlew clean
cd <app-src>
react-native run-android

I hope this works for you.

Default metro builder runs on port 8081. But in my PC, this port is already occupied by some other process (McAfee Antivirus) So I changed the default running port of metro builder to port number 8088 using the following command

react-native run-android start --port=8088

This resolved my issue and the app works fine now.

PS: You can check whether a port is occupied or not in windows using "Resource Monitor" app. (Under "Listening Ports" in "Network" tab). Check out this link for detailed explanation: https://www.paddingleft.com/2018/05/03/Find-process-listening-port-on-Windows/