react-native-pdf-editor

react-native-pdf-editor is a fast React Native library for editing, manipulating, and signing PDF documents natively on mobile. Powered by PoDoFo (a C++ PDF library) and Nitro Modules, it provides identical functionality across both platforms. No server or remote API is involved - PDF operations happen entirely offline on your phone.

At its core, it is a modified wrapper around a PoDoFo fork for creating, editing, and digitally signing PDFs (PAdES B-B/B-T/B-LT/B-LTA), with fast direct C++ bindings via react-native-nitro-modules.

So it is perfect for apps that need to generate reports or receipts, fill and annotate new/existing documents, assemble PDFs from multiple sources, protect files with passwords and permissions, render pages for previews or sharing, extract searchable text, or sign documents with external keys such as YubiKey, HSMs, and cloud KMS providers.

Note: It is still in alpha, and the API may change.

It also does not support viewing PDFs, only PDF manipulation. If you want to display PDFs in your UI, consider these other great solutions:

• react-native-pdf-jsi
• react-native-pdf-viewer
• react-native-pdf

If you like my work, please...

Features

PDF document editing

Create, open, modify, and save PDF documents directly from React Native.

Add, remove, rotate, resize, and reorder pages Merge multiple PDF documents Split documents or copy selected page ranges Insert pages from another PDF Load PDFs from file paths, with optional passwords Save edited documents to disk

Page painting

Draw new page content with a native PDF painter.

Draw text with standard PDF fonts or embedded custom TTF/OTF fonts Load custom fonts from files or in-memory buffers Embed PNG/JPEG image data and draw images onto pages Draw vector lines, rectangles, and circles Set RGB stroke and fill colors Use save/restore graphics-state operations

Annotations and form fields

Create and inspect common PDF annotations and AcroForm fields.

Create highlight, free-text, stamp, ink, and link annotations Read annotation types and update annotation contents and rectangles Create text box and checkbox AcroForm fields Read field names, values, types, and checked state Set text values and checkbox state

Encryption

Protect documents with native PDF encryption.

Set user and owner passwords Use AES-256 encryption for newly protected documents Control print, copy, edit, annotation, fill-and-sign, accessibility, assembly, and high-resolution print permissions Check whether an existing PDF is encrypted Open encrypted PDFs with a password

Page rendering and text extraction

Render and inspect existing PDF page content from React Native.

Render a PDF page to an RGBA8888 bitmap with PdfRenderer.renderPageToBitmap Encode rendered bitmaps to PNG or JPEG files with PdfRenderer.writeBitmapToImage Access rendered bitmap bytes as a zero-copy ArrayBuffer Extract content-stream text from a page Filter extracted text with a regex pattern

Signer-agnostic PAdES signing

Sign PDFs with external keys without coupling the library to a specific key store.

Use a plain Signer interface for certificate chains, raw signatures, and timestamps Plug in YubiKey, HSM, GoTrust, cloud KMS, remote-signing services, or an in-memory development key Sign through signPdf or the lower-level PdfSigningSession workflow Support PAdES B-B, B-T, B-LT, and B-LTA conformance levels Add RFC3161 timestamps, DSS/LTV validation data, and archival timestamps when provided by the signer

React Native integration

Use a small native API surface designed for modern React Native apps.

Built as a New Architecture-only Nitro Module Uses a C++ core on iOS and Kotlin bindings on Android Provides separate react-native-pdf-editor and react-native-pdf-editor/signing entry points Keeps signing types out of apps that only edit PDFs

Platform support

Android and iOS are at parity. iOS binds Nitro's C++ layer directly to PoDoFo's core; Android currently binds Kotlin to the already-published podofo-android JNI wrapper, which exposes a narrower surface.

| Feature | Android | iOS | | ---------------------------------------------------- | --------------------- | --------------------- | | Document create/open/save, page add/remove | Full | Full | | Page rotate/resize/reorder, merge/split | Full (build-verified) | Full (build-verified) | | Painter (text/images/shapes), annotations | Full | Full | | Custom/embedded TTF fonts (from a file path) | Full (pixel-verified) | Full (build-verified) | | Custom/embedded TTF fonts (from an in-memory buffer) | Full (build-verified) | Full (build-verified) | | AcroForm fields (text box, checkbox) | Full | Full | | Radio/combo/list-box/signature fields, flattening | Not bound | Not bound | | Encryption | Full | Full | | Signing (B-B/B-T/B-LT/B-LTA) | Full | Full | | Page rendering, text extraction | Full | Full |

PdfSigningSessionOptions.rootCertificate is supported on both platforms when using PoDoFo 0.0.12 or newer.

Requirements

| | Minimum | | ------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | React Native | 0.79+ with the New Architecture enabled (Nitro Modules requirement) | | iOS | 15.1+ | | Android | minSdkVersion 26 |

Installation

npm install @doko/react-native-pdf-editor react-native-nitro-modules
# or
yarn add @doko/react-native-pdf-editor react-native-nitro-modules
# or
pnpm add @doko/react-native-pdf-editor react-native-nitro-modules

react-native-nitro-modules is required as this library relies on Nitro Modules.

If your app's minSdkVersion is below 26, raise it (e.g. via expo-build-properties's android.minSdkVersion in an Expo-managed app) - PoDoFo's own Android manifest requires it, and the manifest merger will fail otherwise.

Quick start

import { PdfDocument, PdfRenderer } from '@doko/react-native-pdf-editor';

const doc = PdfDocument.create();
// or open an existing file: const doc = await PdfDocument.open('/path/to/existing.pdf');
// (pass a password as a second argument if it's encrypted)
const page = doc.createPage(612, 792);

const painter = page.createPainter();
const font = doc.getStandard14Font('Helvetica');
// or embed your own: const font = doc.loadFont('/path/to/font.ttf');
painter.setFont(font, 24);
painter.drawText('Hello from react-native-pdf-editor!', 50, 700);
painter.finishDrawing();

await doc.save('/path/to/output.pdf');

const bitmap = await PdfRenderer.renderPageToBitmap({
  path: '/path/to/output.pdf',
  pageIndex: 0,
});
// bitmap.data is a zero-copy ArrayBuffer, RGBA8888, bitmap.width x bitmap.height

Signing lives on its own entry point:

import { signPdf, createSigner } from '@doko/react-native-pdf-editor/signing';

const signer = createSigner({
  keyAlgorithm: 'RSA',
  certificateChain: [/* base64 DER, leaf-first */],
  rawSign: async (payloadBase64, algorithm) => {
    // back this with whatever holds the private key: an in-memory dev key
    // via react-native-quick-crypto, a PKCS#11 C_Sign, YubiKit PIV, an HSM,
    // GoTrust, a cloud KMS, ... - see the Signer interface for the shape.
    return mySign(payloadBase64, algorithm);
  },
});

await signPdf(signer, {
  inputPath: '/path/to/output.pdf',
  outputPath: '/path/to/signed.pdf',
  conformanceLevel: 'B-B',
});

More usage (forms, annotations, encryption, rendering, text extraction, PAdES B-T/B-LT/B-LTA) is demonstrated in the example/ app.

Example app

A runnable example app is included in example/ (Expo, exercises document creation, painting, saving, rendering, and text extraction end to end).

pnpm install
pnpm example start

Then press a for Android or i for iOS.

Contributing

• Development workflow
• Sending a pull request
• Code of conduct

License

MIT

Made with create-react-native-library