Expo Router in Production
File-based navigation that stays clean as screens, auth, and deep links grow.
Expo Router gave BolKharcha a mental model I already loved from the web: folders are routes. Auth groups, tabs, and modals become a readable tree instead of a spaghetti navigator config.
The win shows up months later. New screens land where they belong. Deep links stay predictable. Onboarding and main app can share patterns without sharing messy state.
Keep layouts thin. A layout should provide chrome and guards, not business logic. Push data fetching and mutations into hooks and services so routes remain declarative.
Auth gates deserve explicit route groups. Logged-out users should never accidentally mount authenticated dashboards. File structure can encode that policy.
Modals for confirmations and account pickers work well as routes when you want history and deep links. Not everything needs to be a local React state overlay.
The cost of file-based routing is discipline. Dumping random screens at the root recreates the chaos you escaped. Name things for journeys, not for temporary experiments.
If you are starting a React Native app in 2026, Expo Router is not hype. It is structure that scales with a solo developer’s attention span.