Introduction

Aether delivers over-the-air updates to React Native apps. You push a new JavaScript bundle to Aether, and running apps download and apply it without waiting for an app store review. It is a commercial successor to Microsoft CodePush, and its SDK is a drop-in replacement for react-native-code-push.

How it works

You register an app with Aether. Each app has deployment channels; by default, Staging and Production. Each deployment has a key that you build into your app binary.

When the app starts, the SDK asks the Aether server whether that deployment has a newer release for the running binary version. If it does, the SDK downloads the bundle and installs it according to the install mode you chose. You control who gets an update through deployments, staged rollout percentages, and promote and rollback operations.

The parts

• The CLI, @aetherpush/cli, creates apps and deployments, releases updates, promotes them between deployments, and rolls them back. It runs locally and in CI.
• The SDK, @aetherpush/react-native-code-push, is the React Native module that checks for updates, downloads them, and installs them. It needs React Native 0.76 or newer.
• The Expo config plugin, @aetherpush/expo-code-push-plugin, applies the SDK’s native changes during expo prebuild, so Expo projects do not edit native files by hand.
• The REST API at api.aetherpush.com backs all of the above. The API Reference section documents every endpoint.

Where next

• The quickstart takes you from an empty account to a live update.
• The CI/CD section wires releases into GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, Jenkins, or Bitrise.
• The API Reference covers the HTTP API directly.