'expo' is not recognized as an internal or external command

# 'expo' is not recognized as an internal or external command

To solve the error "'expo' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file", install the expo CLI globally by running npm install --global expo-cli and make sure your PATH environment variable is set up correctly.

Open your terminal and install the expo CLI globally by running the following command.

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# 👇️ install expo CLI globally
npm install --global expo-cli

# 👇️ Create a new project
expo init my-project

If the global installation of expo fails, you have to open your shell as an administrator or run the command prefixed with sudo.

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# 👇️ if you got a permissions error
sudo npm install --global expo-cli

# 👇️ Create a new project
expo init my-project

# Update your PATH environment variable

If that doesn't help, run the following command.

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npm config get prefix

The command will show you the path where npm puts your globally installed packages. The global packages will be in the bin directory at the specified path.

Look at the PATH environment variable on your operating system and add the path that the npm config get prefix command outputs if it's not already there.

On Windows, the output of the npm config get prefix command will look something like: C:\Users\Your_User_Name\AppData\Roaming\npm.

To update the PATH on a Windows machine, you have to:

1. Open the start search and type in env and then click "Edit the system environment variables"
2. Then click "Environment Variables"
3. Edit the Path variable and add the output you got from the npm config get prefix command.

The path should look like C:\Users\Your_User_Name\AppData\Roaming\npm (make sure to replace the Your_User_name placeholder with your actual username).

If you get the error "expo cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system", open your PowerShell as an administrator and set its execution policy with the Set-ExecutionPolicy command.

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Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser

This effectively removes the execution policy of Restricted, which doesn't allow us to load configuration files or run scripts. The Restricted execution policy is the default for Windows client computers.

If you are on macOS, you can update your path with the following command:

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# make sure `path` matches with npm config get prefix
export PATH=/usr/local/share/npm/bin:$PATH

If you are on Linux, you can add the output from the npm config get prefix command to your .bashrc file.

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# 👇️ make sure to update the path with the output
# from the command
export PATH="/usr/local/share/npm/bin:$PATH"

If that doesn't help try to reinstall Node.js on your machine and then install the expo CLI globally by running npm install --global expo-cli.

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# 👇️ install expo cLI globally
npm install --global expo-cli

# 👇️ Create a new project
expo init my-project

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# 👇️ if you got a permissions error
sudo npm install --global expo-cli

# 👇️ Create a new project
expo init my-project

Alternatively, you can see how you can fix the permissions error on this page in the official npm docs.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

• 'nodemon' is not recognized as an internal or external command
• 'nuxt' is not recognized as an internal or external command
• 'vue-cli-service' is not recognized as an internal or external command
• 'Yarn' is not recognized as an internal or external command
• 'npm' is not recognized as an internal or external command