For debugging purposes, I often use console.log statements in React Native and Expo applications.

A babel plugin called babel-plugin-transform-remove-console takes care of removing any console statements from the code. This is a great plugin that I like to use, especially before releasing apps in production.

Install the plugin as a dev dependency in the project:

yarn add -D babel-plugin-transform-remove-console

Then, add it as a plugin under env.production in the babel.config.js file:

1module.exports = function () {
2  return {
3    // ... other project config such as presets and plugins
4    env: {
5      production: {
6        plugins: ['transform-remove-console']
7      }
8    }
9  };
10};

This will remove any console statements from the code.

React Native uses Babel as a tool to read and parse React and ES6 (or later) syntax into a specific version of JavaScript code that can run in an environment (that doesn't support newer ES6 or React syntax).