Deployment targets, UIScene, Device Hub, and CI images — what actually changed and what to do about it
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I spent last weekend moving two React Native apps from Xcode 26.6 to Xcode 27.1. One was a bare RN 0.86 app with about forty native dependencies. The other was an Expo SDK 57 app. Both failed, in different places, for the same two underlying reasons.
This is what I wish I’d had on Friday afternoon.
One thing up front: almost everything that breaks React Native arrived in Xcode 27.0, not 27.1. Xcode 27.1 mainly adds the iOS 27.1 SDK and iPhone Duo support. But most teams are jumping straight from Xcode 26.x to 27.1, so you get all of it at once. That’s the jump this guide covers. Everything below is labeled:
✅ Confirmed — Apple docs, an RN or Expo release post, or a GitHub issue I can link.
🟡 Reported — community repos, issues without a maintainer response, blog posts.
💭 Opinion — my mitigation, based on previous Xcode bumps. Treat it as advice, not fact.
TL;DR
Who’s affected: effectively every React Native iOS app built with Xcode 27.x.
