I recently went through multiple days of dependency and version conflict hell to do something I thought should have been incredibly straight forward. I wanted to build a cross platform app that had a live markdown editor and google sign in.

We’re in 2025 and talking about AGI being around the corner. I should be able to build a mobile editor that supports markdown, I thought to myself. I’ve been a software engineer for almost 20 years after all.

I picked Expo for cross platform development. @expensify/react-native-live-markdown for the live markdown editor, and @react-native-google-signin/google-signin to support sign in. Seemed like very rational choices.

Then, all hell broke loose. I am documenting what worked for me in case some other clueless muppet is out there struggling with this. And remember, this was written in Sept 2025.

Here’s the clean “it works” recipe I ended up with that runs Expo + React Native + Live Markdown + Google Sign-In on the iOS simulator (and how to put it on a real iPhone).

✅ Working setup (versions that play nicely)