Firestore WebChannelConnection 'Write' stream transport errored on Expo React Native – write fails in production

[mmaxwell22]

### Describe the bug
Firestore writes consistently fail on iOS (Expo Go and dev builds) with:

@firebase/firestore: Firestore (11.5.0): WebChannelConnection RPC 'Write' stream transport errored

This happens even after trying all known workarounds. I’m in **Newfoundland, Canada**, and suspect it may be regional or CDN-related.

---

### To Reproduce
Steps:

1. Using Expo SDK 50 / React Native
2. Firebase initialized with long polling:

```js
initializeFirestore(app, {
  experimentalForceLongPolling: true,
  useFetchStreams: false,
});

3. Auth works fine. User signs in, UID retrieved.
4. Write attempt:

await setDoc(doc(db, 'users', user.uid), {
  username: 'test',
  role: 'fan',
});

5. Console error:

Firestore: WebChannelConnection RPC 'Write' stream transport errored

No success message, no write saved.

---

Expected behavior

Data should save without RPC transport failure.

---

Logs

@firebase/firestore: WebChannelConnection RPC 'Write' stream transport errored

---

Environment

• Device: iPhone 14 and 15 (iOS)
• Expo Go and Expo Dev Build
• Firebase JS SDK: 11.5.0
• Firestore region: nam5 (multi-region US)
• Location: Canada (Newfoundland)

---

Tried Workarounds

• experimentalForceLongPolling: true
• useFetchStreams: false
• setLogLevel('debug') shows streaming endpoint timeout
• Using REST API works (via fetch) — confirms Auth + Rules are OK
• Firestore rules:

rules_version = '2';
service cloud.firestore {
  match /databases/{database}/documents {
    match /{document=**} {
      allow read, write: if true;
    }
  }
}

• Restarted with expo start --clear
• Tried both getFirestore and initializeFirestore separately

---

Additional context

We're building a music profile MVP. Auth works. Profile form works. But .setDoc(...) never saves. Likely WebChannel/CDN/region issue — can Firestore fallback to REST or newer fetch-based transport in mobile?

---

[google-oss-bot]

I couldn't figure out how to label this issue, so I've labeled it for a human to triage. Hang tight.

[cherylEnkidu]

Hi @mmaxwell22,

Thank you for filling up the ticket! Other than the setDoc, could you please test if other firestore apis work or not? Also this error may cause by #8281 (comment) Could you please enable debug logging by calling setLogLevel('debug') for us to gather more information?

[patrickkeenan]

I'm having this same problem when trying to use getDoc

@firebase/firestore: Firestore (11.5.0): WebChannelConnection RPC 'Listen' stream 0x2a0f18f9 transport errored:

Confirmed that using an older version fixes the issue. Really frustrating, I lost a day to this.

npm install [email protected]

[cherylEnkidu]

Hi @patrickkeenan , could you please provide a minimum repo for the problem you are experiencing? Are you testing against emulator or prod? Which older version works for you?