In Production build, this is how you should initialize your environment variables. Regular .env file would not work in production

Client Development build specific:

When using Expo, the EXPO_PUBLIC_ prefix is required to make environment variables available to the app's code. This makes them accessible, but it also means that all prefixed variables are publicly exposed in the JS bundle, so it's crucial to avoid using this method for secrets in production builds.

Production build specific:

Use expoConfig?.extra variables from app.json file

Use Expo's Constants.expoCongif.extra to access your variables

Happy Coding!