Resolving the “google-services.json is missing” error in Expo SDK 53

During an EAS Build or expo prebuild, Expo will try to include the Android Firebase configuration file (google-services.json) if you set android.googleServicesFile in your app config. The error above occurs because EAS could not find the file at /home/expo/workingdir/build/google_secrets/google-services.json. In your case, the googleServicesFile is set to ./google_secrets/google-services.json, but your logs and config show that /google_secrets is listed in .gitignore. This means the file is not tracked by Git, so EAS never sees it. By default EAS Build only uploads files that are committed to the repo – any ignored files won’t be present on the build server. In short, the build fails because the google-services.json file is missing in the build context. Expo’s documentation confirms that you must provide this file for the Android standalone build (it enables FCM and other Firebase services)docs.expo.dev docs.expo.dev.

Why the file wasn’t included

The error message even hints at the cause: “EAS Build only uploads files tracked by git. Use EAS environment variables to provide EAS Build with the file.” In your project, .gitignore contains /google_secrets, so the google-services.json is explicitly ignored. As a result, when the build runs, the withAndroidDangerousBaseMod (Expo’s native config plugin) cannot copy the file into the Android project, and you get the ENOENT error shown. Expo’s official guides note that you can either check these Firebase config files into your repo or treat them as secrets. For example, the Expo Google Sign-In guide says you can “check them into your repository because the files should not contain sensitive values, or you can treat the files as secrets, add them to .gitignore and use the guide below to make them available in EAS.”docs.expo.dev. In other words, either commit the file or use the EAS secrets mechanism.

Solutions

Option 1: Include the file in your repository. The simplest fix is to remove google-services.json (or the google_secrets/ directory) from .gitignore and commit the file to Git. Expo’s documentation explicitly allows this: it notes that google-services.json “should not contain sensitive values” and may be checked into the repositorydocs.expo.dev. If you commit it, the EAS build will find it (at android/app/google-services.json after prebuild) and the error will go away. However, committing these files is a security decision – while they often contain only API keys that are not highly secret, some teams prefer not to store them in VCS. If you opt to commit, ensure the path in app.json matches (e.g. "googleServicesFile": "./google-services.json" if it’s at the project root).

Option 2 (recommended): Use an EAS secret file. Expo’s modern workflow encourages using EAS environment variables (secrets) to supply this file to the build, rather than checking it into Git. You create a secret of type file on your Expo project, upload the google-services.json to it, and then reference that secret in your app config. For example, you might run:

bashCopyEditeas env:create --scope project --name GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON --type file --value ./google-services.json

This command (per Expo’s docs) creates a project-scoped secret named GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON containing your google-services.json filestackoverflow.com. Once that is done, modify your app config (for a dynamic config you need app.config.js or app.config.ts instead of a static JSON) so that it uses this environment variable for the path. For instance:

jsCopyEdit// app.config.js
export default {
  expo: {
    // ... other settings ...
    android: {
      // Use the EAS secret; fallback to a local path for development
      googleServicesFile: process.env.GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON 
                          || "./google-services.json",
      // ... other android settings ...
    }
  }
};

Here, process.env.GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON is the content of the secret you uploaded, and Expo’s EAS build system will substitute it at build time. The official EAS docs even illustrate this approach: “The GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON is a secret file variable ... used to provide the git ignored google-services.json file to the build job. To use it in the app config, you can use the process.env variable and provide a fallback value in case the variable is not set (for local development)”docs.expo.dev docs.expo.dev. In short, Expo recommends storing the JSON file as an EAS secret and pointing android.googleServicesFile to process.env.GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSONstackoverflow.com docs.expo.dev.

After these changes, run your EAS build again. The secret file will be injected, and the build process can copy it into android/app/google-services.json as needed. As one community answer summarizes, “the file google-services.json should be in android/app and can’t be in .gitignore. You can set google-services.json as an expo secret in your project [on expo.dev]… using googleServicesFile: process.env.GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON in your app config”stackoverflow.com. This matches Expo’s guidance and should resolve the error without checking the secret file into your repo.

In summary: The error means the Firebase config file is missing in the build. Make sure EAS can access it – either commit the file into version control or (preferably) upload it as an EAS secret and reference it via process.env.GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON in your Expo configdocs.expo.dev docs.expo.dev. This will allow the build to find and copy google-services.json correctly.

Sources: Expo documentation on Google/Firebase setup and EAS secretsdocs.expo.dev docs.expo.dev; community solutions for using process.env.GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON and the eas env:create workflowstackoverflow.com stackoverflow.com.

Citations

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