React Native app won't start when using applicationIdSuffix

What Im using for React Native 0.60+ with multiple build configurations

In my app/bundle.gradle file I have the following configuration

productFlavors {
   dev {
       applicationId "com.my.app.development"
       dimension "standard"
   }
   production {
       applicationId "com.my.app"
       dimension "standard"
   }
}

buildTypes {
   release {
        // your release build values
   }
   debug {
       // your debug build values
       debuggable true
   }
}

For a standard debug build

react-native run-android --variant devDebug --appIdSuffix \"development\"

For a Staging build (dev variables, but built for release)

react-native run-android --variant devRelease --appIdSuffix \"development\"

For a Release build

react-native run-android --variant productionRelease

---

this worked for me on react-native 0.50.3

react-native run-android --appIdSuffix "debug"

From the link above, it's been discussed for a long time (over a year) on github, and there seems to be a few patches on their way, so my fix below may or may not work depending on the version of react-native you're using.

Here's how I've (temporarily) solved the issue. The problem is that react-native-cli tries to call adb shell am start with the wrong argument:

com.packagename/com.packagename.MainActivity

when it should be calling something like

com.packagename.debug/com.packagename.MainActivity

So until your version of react-native is fixed, you can use this command (as recommended in this code-push PR:

cd android && ./gradlew installDebug && adb -s <DEVICE_ID> shell am start -n com.packageName.debug/com.packageName.MainActivity

It's not a perfect fix, but there's a patch on github which does essentially the same thing (in relation to a couple of issues and pull requests here & here).

If you have a custom applicationId (different from your Java package name), you have to specify it when running the run-android command

npx react-native run-android --appId com.custompackagename.debug

You will see the result at the end when react is starting the intent

Starting: Intent { cmp=com.custompackagename.debug/com.packagename.MainActivity