A high performance, easy to use, rock solid
camera library for React Native apps.

Cross Platform (iOS and Android) Optimized for performance and high photo capture rate QR / Barcode scanning support Camera preview support in iOS simulator

yarn add react-native-camera-kit

cd ios && pod install && cd ..

Android: Add Kotlin to your project

You must use a separate library for prompting the user for permissions before rendering the <Camera .../> component.
We recommend zoontek's library, react-native-permissions: https://github.com/zoontek/react-native-permissions#ios-flow

If you fail to prompt for permission, the camera will appear blank / black.

Conceptually, permissions are simple: Granted / Denied.
However, in reality it's not that simple due to privacy enhancements on iOS and Android.

Here's an example diagram from react-native-permissions's README, which illustrates the complexity of the user-experience, which we don't want to duplicate in a camera library:

   ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
   ┃ check(PERMISSIONS.IOS.CAMERA) ┃
   ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
                   │
       Is the feature available
           on this device ?
                   │           ╔════╗
                   ├───────────║ NO ║──────────────┐
                   │           ╚════╝              │
                ╔═════╗                            ▼
                ║ YES ║                 ┌─────────────────────┐
                ╚═════╝                 │ RESULTS.UNAVAILABLE │
                   │                    └─────────────────────┘
           Is the permission
             requestable ?
                   │           ╔════╗
                   ├───────────║ NO ║──────────────┐
                   │           ╚════╝              │
                ╔═════╗                            ▼
                ║ YES ║                  ┌───────────────────┐
                ╚═════╝                  │ RESULTS.BLOCKED / │
                   │                     │ RESULTS.LIMITED / │
                   │                     │  RESULTS.GRANTED  │
                   ▼                     └───────────────────┘
          ┌────────────────┐
          │ RESULTS.DENIED │
          └────────────────┘
                   │
                   ▼
  ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
  ┃ request(PERMISSIONS.IOS.CAMERA) ┃
  ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
                   │
         Does the user accept
            the request ?
                   │           ╔════╗
                   ├───────────║ NO ║──────────────┐
                   │           ╚════╝              │
                ╔═════╗                            ▼
                ║ YES ║                   ┌─────────────────┐
                ╚═════╝                   │ RESULTS.BLOCKED │
                   │                      └─────────────────┘
                   ▼
          ┌─────────────────┐
          │ RESULTS.GRANTED │
          └─────────────────┘

In earlier versions of react-native-camera-kit, permissions were provided with an API, but for the above reasons, these APIs will be removed.

Add the following uses-permission to your AndroidManifest.xml (usually found at: android/src/main/)

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CAMERA" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"/>

Add the following usage descriptions to your Info.plist (usually found at: ios/PROJECT_NAME/)

<key>NSCameraUsageDescription</key>
<string>For taking photos</string>

<key>NSPhotoLibraryUsageDescription</key>
<string>For saving photos</string>

• yarn bootstrap
• yarn example ios or yarn example android

Barebones camera component if you need advanced/customized interface

import { Camera, CameraType } from 'react-native-camera-kit';

<Camera
  ref={(ref) => (this.camera = ref)}
  cameraType={CameraType.Back} // front/back(default)
  flashMode='auto'
/>

Additionally, the Camera can be used for barcode scanning

<Camera
  ...
  // Barcode props
  scanBarcode={true}
  onReadCode={(event) => Alert.alert('QR code found')} // optional
  showFrame={true} // (default false) optional, show frame with transparent layer (qr code or barcode will be read on this area ONLY), start animation for scanner, that stops when a code has been found. Frame always at center of the screen
  laserColor='red' // (default red) optional, color of laser in scanner frame
  frameColor='white' // (default white) optional, color of border of scanner frame
/>

Note: Must be called on a valid camera ref

Capture image as JPEG.

A temporary file is created. You must move this file to a permanent location (e.g. the app's 'Documents' folder) if you need it beyond the current session of the app as it may be deleted when the user leaves the app. You can move files by using a file system library such as react-native-fs or expo-filesystem. (On Android we currently have an unsupported outputPath prop but it's subject to change at any time).

Note that the reason you're getting a URL despite it being a file is because Android 10+ encourages URIs. To keep things consistent regardless of settings or platform we always send back a URI.

const { uri } = await this.camera.capture();
// uri = 'file:///data/user/0/com.myorg.myapp/cache/ckcap123123123123.jpg'

If you want to store it permanently, here's an example using react-native-fs:

import RNFS from 'react-native-fs';
// [...]
let { uri } = await this.camera.capture();
if (uri.startsWith('file://')) {
  // Platform dependent, iOS & Android uses '/'
  const pathSplitter = '/';
  // file:///foo/bar.jpg => /foo/bar.jpg
  const filePath = uri.replace('file://', '');
  // /foo/bar.jpg => [foo, bar.jpg]
  const pathSegments = filePath.split(pathSplitter);
  // [foo, bar.jpg] => bar.jpg
  const fileName = pathSegments[pathSegments.length - 1];

  await RNFS.moveFile(filePath, `${RNFS.DocumentDirectoryPath}/${fileName}`);
  uri = `file://${destFilePath}`;
}

const isCameraAuthorized = await Camera.checkDeviceCameraAuthorizationStatus();

return values:

AVAuthorizationStatusAuthorized returns true

AVAuthorizationStatusNotDetermined returns -1

otherwise, returns false

const isUserAuthorizedCamera = await Camera.requestDeviceCameraAuthorization();

AVAuthorizationStatusAuthorized returns true

otherwise, returns false

If you are using Expo Managed Workflow, you can use this library with a third-party plugin expo-react-native-camera-kit.

See more here

• Pull Requests are welcome, if you open a pull request we will do our best to get to it in a timely manner
• Pull Request Reviews are even more welcome! we need help testing, reviewing, and updating open PRs
• If you are interested in contributing more actively, please contact us.

The MIT License.

See LICENSE