Well, If you talking about changing the “Install” to “Update” button in google play u have to change versionCode in your app.json and increment its value each time you build apk / aab.
if you talking about how to force user to go to playstore and update when user open your app heres what im doing.
- Make an API that will return latest version of your app. for example /app/version/ returns { version : “1.0.0”
- In your app. when app first loaded. call that api and get the version. and compare it to your app native version that u can call in “expo-application” library theres a ‘nativeApplicationVersion’ variable which going to return your current app version. now compare it. if the version that returned from your api is higher than the version of the app . then do something. like display popup etc.
that way, if you change your version in that api to lets say “1.0.1” and you also upload that version in google playstore. users that already have downloaded version 1.0.0 will get the popup. or maybe display a button so that when user click it they will be redirected to you playstore page. through link.