Why do I keep getting this error code when starting Expo client

Question

To run the app, choose one of: › Scan the QR code above with the Expo app (Android) or the Camera app (iOS). › Press a for Android emulator, or i for iOS simulator, or w to run on web. › Press e to send a link to your phone with email.

Press ? to show a list of all available commands. Logs for your project will appear below. Press Ctrl+C to exit. Error: EMFILE: too many open files, watch at FSEvent.FSWatcher._handle.onchange (internal/fs/watchers.js:178:28) npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE npm ERR! errno 1 npm ERR! @ start: expo start npm ERR! Exit status 1 npm ERR! npm ERR! Failed at the @ start script. npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:

Answer 1

brew install watchman

running this command solved my exactly same problem. if you look at the error message you are getting, it says:

Error: EMFILE: too many open files, watch at FSEvent.FSWatcher._handle.onchange.

react native is able to use watchman internally to watch its files. I hope this will work for your as well

Answer 2

Oybek's solution did not work for me, but it would work if had Intel based Mac computer.

For those who have Apple M1 Silicon based machine such command may be daysaver:

arch -arm64 brew install watchman

or

arch -arm64 brew reinstall watchman

when you have some bad installation of watchman already done.