@aquienpz/asset-compressor-native

Fast, native (iOS + Android) image compression for React Native apps that upload to the aquienpz asset platform. Pairs with @aquienpz/asset-uploader-expo and mirrors the API of @aquienpz/asset-compressor-web so call sites are identical across platforms.

Why this exists

expo-image-manipulator is the default option in Expo apps, but it runs the resize + re-encode through the JS bridge and ships an intermediate bitmap as a JS-heap allocation. On a 12MP iPhone HEIC, a single resize-to-2880px + JPEG q=0.85 takes ~2–4 seconds — long enough to make a 10-photo batch upload feel broken.

This package wraps react-native-compressor, which calls libjpeg-turbo (iOS) / Bitmap.compress (Android) on a background thread and never moves pixel data across the bridge. The same operation runs in ~250–350ms — roughly 5–10× faster than the Expo equivalent on identical hardware.

Install

# in your Expo / RN app
npm install @aquienpz/asset-compressor-native react-native-compressor
# Expo: also run the config-plugin once
npx expo prebuild

Add the plugin entry to app.json:

{
  "expo": {
    "plugins": ["react-native-compressor"]
  }
}

Usage

import { compressImage, compressImages } from "@aquienpz/asset-compressor-native";

// Single image
const result = await compressImage({
  uri: pickerAsset.uri,
  filename: pickerAsset.fileName ?? "photo.jpg",
});
// → { uri: 'file:///.../photo.jpg', size: 412903, originalSize: 4218876, compressionRatio: 0.097 }

// Batch
const { successful, failed } = await compressImages(
  pickerAssets.map((a, i) => ({ uri: a.uri, filename: a.fileName ?? `photo-${i}.jpg`, id: a.assetId })),
  { quality: 0.85, maxWidth: 2880, concurrency: 1 },
  (id, status, index) => console.log(`[${index}] ${id} → ${status}`),
);

Output format

Output is always JPEG. react-native-compressor natively supports only jpg / png, and the asset-manager re-encodes every uploaded image to WebP server-side anyway when generating size variants — so forcing WebP on device would cost binary size + native module maintenance for zero net bandwidth win.

The on-device savings (HEIC/big-JPEG → 2880px JPEG q=0.85) are already ~80–95% before the upload starts.

API parity with @aquienpz/asset-compressor-web

| Web | Native | | ---------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | | input Blob | input uri (file://, content://, ph://) | | output Blob (mime configurable) | output file uri on disk (always JPEG) | | compressionStatus: convertingHeic | not emitted (HEIC decode is part of compressing) | | concurrency: p-limit / navigator.hwc | concurrency: bounded worker pool, default 1 | | HEIC fallback: heic2any | HEIC handled natively by ImageIO / android-heif |

Everything else (quality default 0.85, maxWidth/Height 2880, status callback shape, error collection in compressImages) is identical.

Cleanup

react-native-compressor writes outputs to the app's cache directory. iOS will reclaim it under memory pressure; Android does the same when the cache exceeds cacheQuotaBytes. If you upload + don't need the local copy, delete it yourself with expo-file-system or react-native-fs once the upload completes.