// the take
A tutorial project from Expo's blog showing how to build an Instagram-style feed with Expo, React Native, and the Firebase Web SDK (Firestore, Storage, Auth) — photo upload, feed, and basic social-network CRUD. It's aimed at someone learning how Expo and Firestore fit together, not at anyone building a production app.
The directory structure is small and readable — screens, components, and utils are cleanly separated so you can trace a feature (e.g. uploadPhoto.js) end to end in a few minutes. It pairs with a full written tutorial from an Expo team member, so the code and the explanation stay in sync. Image handling (getPermission, shrinkImageAsync) covers the annoying parts of camera/photo-library work on both platforms in a few short files.
Last commit is from October 2019 — six years stale against Expo SDK versions, React Native, and the Firebase JS SDK that have all shipped breaking changes since; expect it to not run as-is. There are no tests at all, and no TypeScript, so there's nothing enforcing the shape of the Firestore documents it reads and writes. It uses the Firebase Web SDK instead of a React Native-specific Firebase library, which was already a debatable choice in 2019 and is worse now given better-maintained alternatives (react-native-firebase). No CI, no example .env or Firebase config instructions beyond what's in the blog post, so getting it running requires piecing together Firebase project setup yourself.
We read the README, the directory tree and a key source file in October 2026. Nobody pays to be listed. How we judge →