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Developer Guide for Jitsi Meet

This guide will help you setup a development environment to start working on the Jitsi Meet mobile app itself.

caution

Building the apps / SDKs is not supported on Windows.

Overview​

note

This guide is about building the Jitsi Meet apps themselves. If you want to integrate the Jitsi Meet SDK into your own application check the dedicated page on the sidebar.

Jitsi Meet can be built as a standalone app for Android or iOS. It uses the React Native framework.

First make sure the following dependencies are installed:

  • watchman
  • nodejs
  • npm
Node version

Node 20.x and npm 10.x are required. Any other version may result in runtime errors.

Xcode

Xcode 15 or higher is required.

iOS​

  1. Install dependencies

  • Install main dependencies:

    npm install

  • Install the required pods (CocoaPods must be installed first, it can be done with Homebrew: brew install cocoapods)

    cd ios
    pod install
    cd ..

  1. Build the app using Xcode

    • Open ios/jitsi-meet.xcworkspace in Xcode. Make sure it's the workspace file!

    • Select your device from the top bar and hit the Play ▶️ button.

    When the app is launched from Xcode, the Debug Console will show the application output logs.

  2. Other remarks

    It's likely you'll need to change the bundle ID for deploying to a device. This can be changed in the General tab. Under Identity set Bundle Identifier to a different value, and adjust the Team in the Signing section to match your own.

Android​

Building and running with Android Studio​

  1. Install Android Studio.

  2. Set the JDK to at least Java 11: Android Studio → Settings → Build, Execution, Deployment → Build Tools → Gradle → Gradle JDK.

    See also: https://developer.android.com/studio/intro/studio-config#jdk

  3. Install JavaScript dependencies from the repository root:

    npm install

  4. Open the project in Android Studio:

    • Choose Open and select the android/ folder inside the repository.
    • Wait for the Gradle sync to complete. Android Studio will download all required SDK components automatically on the first run.
    tip

    If Gradle sync fails, go to File → Invalidate Caches / Restart and try again. Make sure your JDK is set correctly (step 2).

  5. Select your target device from the device drop-down in the top toolbar (a connected physical device or a configured AVD emulator).

  6. Click the Run ▶️ button (or press Shift + F10). Android Studio will build the APK and deploy it to the selected device.

  7. Start the Metro bundler from the repository root:

    npm start

    The app will automatically connect to Metro once it launches on the device.

    note

    If the app cannot find the Metro bundler (e.g., on a physical device), run:

    adb reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081

Building and running without Android Studio​

note

This section describes a fully command-line based workflow that works on Linux, macOS, and WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). You do not need Android Studio installed.

1. Download the Android SDK command-line tools​

Download the Command-line tools only package (not Android Studio) from the official Android developer site.

After extracting the archive, the expected directory structure should look like this:

~/Android/Sdk/
└── cmdline-tools/
    └── latest/          ← rename the extracted folder to "latest" if it isn't already
        ├── bin/
        ├── lib/
        ├── NOTICE.txt
        └── source.properties
tip

If the extracted folder has a name like cmdline-tools-<version>, rename it to latest so that sdkmanager and other tools resolve paths correctly:

mv ~/Android/Sdk/cmdline-tools/cmdline-tools-<version> ~/Android/Sdk/cmdline-tools/latest

2. Configure environment variables​

Add the following lines to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc, then reload the shell:

export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/Android/Sdk"
export PATH="$ANDROID_HOME/cmdline-tools/latest/bin:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$PATH"
source ~/.bashrc   # or source ~/.zshrc

3. Install required SDK packages and accept licenses​

Use sdkmanager to install the necessary SDK components:

sdkmanager "platform-tools" "platforms;android-34" "build-tools;34.0.0"
sdkmanager --licenses

Accept all prompts by pressing y when asked.

4. Install JavaScript dependencies​

From the repository root, run:

npm install

5. Build and install on a physical device​

  1. Enable USB debugging on your Android device (Settings → Developer options → USB debugging).

  2. Connect the device via USB and verify it is detected:

    adb devices

    You should see your device listed with the status device. If it shows unauthorized, unlock your phone and accept the RSA key fingerprint prompt.

  3. Navigate to the android/ directory and run:

    cd android
    ./gradlew installDebug

    This will build the debug APK, install it on the connected device, and automatically start the Metro bundler. You do not need to run npm start separately.

    note

    The first build may take several minutes as Gradle downloads its own dependencies. Subsequent builds are faster due to caching.

Adding extra dependencies​

Due to how our project is structured, React Native's automatic linking won't work so Android dependencies need to be manually linked.

First, add your project to android/settings.gradle like so:

android/settings.gradle
include ':react-native-mydependency'
project(':react-native-mydependency').projectDir = new File(rootProject.projectDir, '../node_modules/@somenamespace/react-native-mydependency/android')

Then add a dependency on android/sdk/build.gradle like so:

android/sdk/build.gradle
implementation project(':react-native-mydependency')

Last, link it in the getReactNativePackages method in android/sdk/src/main/java/org/jitsi/meet/sdk/ReactInstanceManagerHolder.java like so:

android/sdk/src/main/java/org/jitsi/meet/sdk/ReactInstanceManagerHolder.java
new com.companyname.library.AwesomeLibraryPackage(),

Make sure you adjust the fully qualified package name.

Debugging​

The official documentation on debugging is quite extensive and specifies the preferred method for debugging.

note

When using Chrome Developer Tools for debugging the JavaScript source code is being interpreted by Chrome's V8 engine, instead of JSCore which React Native uses. It's important to keep this in mind due to potential differences in supported JavaScript features. Also note Jitsi Meet does not support Flipper.

Enabling extra features​