How to forbid Tablet usage in expo / react-native?

Question

I have developed an app with Expo and react-native for Smartphones - now I am trying to upload the ".aab" file to the Google Play Store - however it seems like it will be available for tablet and wearables, too. I could not really find out how to either code it into the "app.json" or into the code itself, that only a smartphone must be supported.

Furthermore, it should not be possible to even download the app from any other device than a smartphone, cause that would cause bad ux

I tried the device catalogue but could only choose to block by processor or RAM - is there an easy goto solution?

Answer 1

To forbid your app from Tablet/TV support you just need to add the following tag to AndroidManifestFile.xml.

If you're using expo try to eject and do it.

<manifest ... >
    <supports-screens android:smallScreens="true"
                      android:normalScreens="true"       
                      android:largeScreens="false"         <- forbid for tablets
                      android:xlargeScreens="false"/>      <- forbid for tv
    ...
</manifest>

Note: The below things said by the expo so don't worry about eject(If you do not want to modify native files) but know about completely.

After you eject, all your JS files will stay the same, but we'll additionally create ios and android directories in your project folder. These will contain Xcode and Android Studio projects respectively, and they'll have dependencies on React Native and on Expo's core SDK. You'll still be able to develop and test your project with Expo CLI, and you'll still be able to publish your Expo JS code the same way. However, if you add native dependencies that aren't included in Expo, other users won't be able to run those features of your app with the main Expo app. You'll need to distribute the native project yourself.