What version of xcode are you running?

I am running Xcode 7

Hi @pangers! That's unfortunate. Did you try rebooting your machine? And close any existing terminal window with the dev server running?

This could be a path issue somewhere. Is NPM installed properly? is it globally accessible?

@brentvatne Yep just restarted my machine, with no terminal windows open and I must still run npm start manually before building with Xcode.

@jaygarcia I seem to be able to type npm -v in any directory of my computer so I assume it is globally accesible

There's been also an issue regarding that but I can't find it. Are you running xcodeproj or xcworkspace with Pods? I am on XCode 7 and everything works properly. With Pods, it looks like you may need to copy one script that's responsible for packager to your build settings.

Please check if you have it under Build Phases -> Run Script.

I discovered the problem. One of the directories that the project folder was in had a space in its name. As soon as I removed the space, hitting command + R automatically ran the npm server!

Yes I had faced the same issue. It's because of space in the directory name

"Test One" - Doesn't work
"Test_One" - Works

"The file /Users/konstantin/Desktop/Test One/TestMe/node_modules/react-native/React/One/TestMe/node_modules/react-native/packager/launchPackager.command does not exist.
Can't start packager automatically
"

Steps to Reproduce:

mkdir Test\ One
cd Test\ One
react-native init TestMe

Open Xcode project and hit build

May be add double quotes to this line

"$SRCROOT/../packager/launchPackager.command"

+1