kernel/updates

useAppUpdateCheck() — compares your app’s installed version against the App Store / Play Store latest, and tells you whether an update is available. Pure TypeScript — no native code at all.


import { useAppUpdateCheck } from 'react-native-kernel/updates';

`useAppUpdateCheck(options)`


import { useAppUpdateCheck } from 'react-native-kernel/updates';
import { Linking } from 'react-native';
 
function UpdateBanner() {
  const update = useAppUpdateCheck({
    currentVersion: '1.4.0',
    iosAppId: '123456789',
    checkForUpdate: async () => {
      const res = await fetch('https://api.example.com/latest-version');
      return res.json(); // { latestVersion: string, storeUrl?: string }
    },
  });
 
  if (!update.isUpdateAvailable) return null;
 
  return (
    <Banner
      text={`Version ${update.latestVersion} is available`}
      onPress={() => update.storeUrl && Linking.openURL(update.storeUrl)}
    />
  );
}

Options

Option	Type	Notes
`currentVersion`	`string`	Required. Your app’s installed version — this module doesn’t read it for you
`iosAppId`	`string`	Numeric App Store ID, used by the default iOS checker
`androidPackageName`	`string`	Used only if you also pass your own `checkForUpdate` that needs it
`checkForUpdate`	`() => Promise<{ latestVersion, storeUrl? }>`	Overrides the default checker entirely
`checkOnMount`	`boolean`	Default `true`

Android has no official public “latest version” API. Unlike Apple’s iTunes lookup endpoint (which the default iOS checker uses), the Play Store’s latest version is only visible by scraping the store page’s HTML — unofficial, and it can break silently the moment Google changes the page. This module deliberately refuses to do that. On Android, you must pass checkForUpdate pointing at your own backend — omitting it throws a clear error immediately, rather than silently shipping a scraper that could stop working without warning.

Most production apps already have a version-gate endpoint for exactly this reason, so in practice this is usually just wiring up something you already have.

Return value

Field	Type
`isChecking`	`boolean`
`isUpdateAvailable`	`boolean`
`currentVersion`	`string`
`latestVersion`	`string \| null`
`storeUrl`	`string \| null`
`error`	`Error \| null` — captured, never thrown out of the hook
`check()`	`() => Promise<void>` — manual re-trigger

Version comparison is numeric per-segment (1.10.0 > 1.9.0), not lexicographic, and tolerant of differing segment counts (1.2 vs 1.2.0) and non-numeric suffixes (1.2.3-beta).

Next: Roadmap.