📢 Type of change

• Bugfix
• New feature
• Enhancement
• Refactoring

📜 Description

Follow up to #4472 (v6) > #5470 (v7) targeting v8 #5501

• Capture App Start errors and crashes by initializing Sentry from sentry.options.json (#4472)

  Create sentry.options.json in the React Native project root and set options the same as you currently have in Sentry.init in JS.

  {
      "dsn": "https://key@example.io/value",
  }

  Initialize Sentry on the native layers by newly provided native methods.

  import io.sentry.react.RNSentrySDK
  
  class MainApplication : Application(), ReactApplication {
      override fun onCreate() {
          super.onCreate()
          RNSentrySDK.init(this)
      }
  }

  #import <RNSentry/RNSentry.h>
  
  @implementation AppDelegate
  - (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application
      didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions
  {
      [RNSentrySDK start];
      return [super application:application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:launchOptions];
  }
  @end

• Add RNSentrySDK APIs support to @sentry/react-native/expo plugin (#4633)

  • Adds useNativeInit option to automatically initialize Sentry natively before JavaScript loads, enabling capture of app start errors

  {
    "expo": {
      "plugins": [
        [
          "@sentry/react-native/expo",
          {
            "useNativeInit": true
          }
        ]
      ]
    }
  }

Changes

• Load optionsFile into the JS bundle during Metro bundle process (#4476)
• Add experimental version of startWithConfigureOptions for Apple platforms (#4444)
• Add experimental version of init with optional OptionsConfiguration<SentryAndroidOptions> for Android (#4451)
• Add initialization using sentry.options.json for Apple platforms (#4447)
• Add initialization using sentry.options.json for Android (#4451)
• Merge options from file with Sentry.init options in JS (#4510)

Internal

• Extract iOS native initialization to standalone structures (#4442)
• Extract Android native initialization to standalone structures (#4445)

Note

The feature the feature should be 100% backwards compatible and opt-in. Users who don't create sentry.options.json or call RNSentrySDK.start()/init() will experience zero changes to their existing Sentry implementation. The traditional JS-only initialization path remains fully functional and is the default behavior.

📝 Documentation PR: getsentry/sentry-docs#16170

💡 Motivation and Context

Fixes #3608

Previously, React Native apps couldn't capture errors that occurred during app startup before JavaScript initialized, because Sentry was only initialized from JavaScript code (Sentry.init()). This meant crashes during:

• Native module initialization
• JavaScript bundle loading
• Early React Native bridge setup

were never captured.

💚 How did you test it?

CI, Manually

📝 Checklist

• I added tests to verify changes
• No new PII added or SDK only sends newly added PII if sendDefaultPII is enabled
• I updated the docs if needed.
• I updated the wizard if needed.
• All tests passing
• No breaking changes

🔮 Next steps

#skip-changelog