Android: clerk-android-ui pulls in ads-mobile-sdk, conflicts with play-services-ads

[YonasValentin]

Bug report

When using @clerk/expo@3.1.6 alongside react-native-google-mobile-ads@15.8.3, the Android build fails with duplicate class errors.

What happens

clerk-android-ui:1.0.10 transitively depends on com.google.android.libraries.ads.mobile.sdk:ads-mobile-sdk:0.21.0-beta01. This package contains the same classes as com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads-api:24.6.0 (which comes from react-native-google-mobile-ads).

Gradle catches this during checkReleaseDuplicateClasses and kills the build.

Error

Duplicate class com.google.android.gms.ads.AdError found in modules
  ads-mobile-sdk-0.21.0-beta01.aar (com.google.android.libraries.ads.mobile.sdk:ads-mobile-sdk:0.21.0-beta01)
  play-services-ads-api-24.6.0.aar (com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads-api:24.6.0)

(Same for ~50 other classes in com.google.android.gms.ads.* and com.google.android.gms.ads.mediation.*)

Environment

• @clerk/expo: 3.1.6
• react-native-google-mobile-ads: 15.8.3
• React Native: 0.81.5
• Expo SDK: 54
• Gradle: 8.14.3
• Build: EAS cloud (production profile)

Workaround

Excluding the transitive dependency via a config plugin works:

configurations.all {
    exclude group: 'com.google.android.libraries.ads.mobile.sdk', module: 'ads-mobile-sdk'
}

This keeps play-services-ads-api from the AdMob package and drops the beta ads-mobile-sdk from Clerk. Auth still works fine without it.

Expected behavior

clerk-android-ui shouldn't pull in Google's ads SDK as a transitive dependency. It's unrelated to authentication and creates conflicts for anyone using AdMob.

Ideally, clerk-android-ui should either exclude ads-mobile-sdk from its own dependencies, or pin a version that doesn't conflict with play-services-ads-api.