@abganzon Your issue was never the _redirects file.
This is because you weren’t getting the 404 error due to having or not having _redirects.
You were getting the 404 due to not having an /index.html file in the root of your dist output.
As I previously mentioned, the file you showed in your last screenshot was /dist/public/index.html
The _redirects file and the rule you were trying to apply isn’t a magic fix for ‘all 404’s’
It’s for Single Page Applications (SPA) to route direct requests from sub-pages to the main page.
Since they frequently only have an /index.html ‘entry point’ for the application.
It means if someone requests /about they still ultimately load /index.html
At which point the application determines what it should show for /about
If you don’t have an /index.html page, you can’t redirect to it.
Just like if you didn’t have a /cat.html you couldn’t redirect to that.
It would just create a redirect that always resolves to a 404.
That said, your redirects were probably never being applied.
In your most recent screenshot you have _redirects in your repository root.
This isn’t the correct location for your build.
The _redirects file needs end up in the root of your ‘publish directory’
If you were publishing dist this means it would need to be in dist when you build completes.
The easiest way to confirm this is to run your ‘build command’ locally and see what it outputs.
You just needed to update your/build settings to ensure the output going to dist was correct.