[$250] [Due for payment 2025-12-23] Add `expo-location` which can replace `@react-native-community/geolocation`

[GCyganek]

Name of library: expo-location

Details

• Link to package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/expo-location https://docs.expo.dev/versions/latest/sdk/location/

• Problem solved by using this package:

  • supports background location for updates which is required for Start GPS feature on New Expensify, which our current geolocation library does not support for Android as you can see here:

• Number of stars in GH: 44.4k

• Number of monthly downloads: 395k weekly downloads

• Number of releases in the last year: 24

• Level of activity in the repo: High

• Alternatives:

  • @react-native-community/geolocation that we're already using, but it has 2x less weekly downloads, there was no release for over a year, and there is no support for background location updates on Android (related issue)

• Are security concerns brought up and addressed in the library's repo? No security concerns

• How many dependencies does this lib use that will be brought into our code? 0

• What will the effect be on the bundle size of our code? expo-location has 573 kB of unpacked size. If we were to replace our current geolocation library with it (which has 168 kB of unpacked size + 22.2 kB of unpacked size of react-native-android-location-enabler which can also be replaced by expo-location) then there will be 382.8 kB more of unpacked size after the migration to expo-location. On the plus side, it has richer API in case we will want to add more location-related features in the future.

The migration from @react-native-community/geolocation to expo-location doesn't look hard as it's only used in getCurrentLocation which has only 7 references in the codebase.

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022003938138994591872
• Upwork Job ID: 2003938138994591872
• Last Price Increase: 2025-12-24

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @blimpich (AutoAssignerAppLibraryReview), see https://stackoverflowteams.com/c/expensify/questions/17737 for more details.

[melvin-bot]

New Library Review

• Are all the answers in the main description filled out properly and make sense?
• Who maintains the library and how well is it maintained?
• How viable are the alternatives?
• Should we build it ourselves instead?

Once these questions are answered, start a thread in #engineering-chat, ping the @app_deployers group, and call for a vote to accept the new library. Once the vote is complete, update this issue with the outcome and procede accordingly. Here is a sample post:

Hey @app_deployers,

There is a request to add a new library to App that we need to consider. Please look at this GH and then vote :+1: or :-1: on accepting this new library or not.

GH_LINK

[blimpich]

Posted to #engineering-chat for vote

[blimpich]

@GCyganek Vote passed! ✅

[blimpich]

@GCyganek will your PR to replace the library reference this issue or another one? If there's another issue tracking the actual replacing of the library then I'll close this issue since the vote in complete.

[GCyganek]

@blimpich we can keep this issue open for that, if that's ok

[blimpich]

Sounds good, I'll assign you 👍