Nitro Image is a superfast Image core type and view component for React Native, built with Nitro!

• Powered by Nitro Modules for highly efficient native bindings! 🔥
• Instance-based Image type with byte-buffer pixel data access 🔗
• Supports in-memory image operations like resizing and cropping without saving to file 📐
• Supports deferred ImageLoader types to optimize for displaying large lists of Images ⏳
• Fast Web Image loading and caching using SDWebImage (iOS) and Coil (Android) 🌎
• ThumbHash support for elegant placeholders 🖼️

function App() {
  return (
    <NitroImage
      image={{ filePath: '/tmp/image.jpg' }}
      style={{ width: 400, height: 400 }}
    />
  )
}

Installation

Install react-native-nitro-image from npm:

npm i react-native-nitro-image
npm i react-native-nitro-modules
cd ios && pod install

[!NOTE] Since NitroImage is built with Nitro Views, it requires the new architecture to be enabled.

Web Images

To keep NitroImage super lightweight, it does not ship a web image loader and caching system. If you want to load images from the web, install react-native-nitro-web-image as well:

npm i react-native-nitro-web-image
cd ios && pod install

Then, since SDWebImage does not enable modular headers for static linkage, you need to enable those yourself in your app's Podfile:

target '…' do
  config = use_native_modules!

  # Add this line:
  pod 'SDWebImage', :modular_headers => true

Usage

Creating Images

The simplest way to load an Image is to use the exported loadImage(…) method:

const webImage      = await loadImage({ url: 'https://picsum.photos/seed/123/400' })
const fileImage     = await loadImage({ filePath: 'file://my-image.jpg' })
const resourceImage = await loadImage({ resource: 'my-image.jpg' })
const symbolImage   = await loadImage({ symbol: 'star' })
const requireImage  = await loadImage(require('./my-image.jpg'))

Under the hood, this uses the native methods from Images or WebImages:

const webImage      = await WebImages.loadFromURLAsync('https://picsum.photos/seed/123/400')
const fileImage     = await Images.loadFromFileAsync('file://my-image.jpg')
const resourceImage = Images.loadFromResources('my-resource.jpg')
const symbolImage   = Images.loadFromSymbol('star')

Creating a blank Image

Additionally, you can also create a new blank Image:

const blank = Images.createBlankImage(100, 100, /*enableAlpha:*/ true)

If you want to fill the blank image with a specific background color, pass the color in RGB:

const blankRedImage = Images.createBlankImage(100,
                                              100,
                                              /*enableAlpha:*/ true,
                                              { r: 1, g: 0, b: 0 })

Load with Options

When loading from a remote URL, you can tweak options such as priority:

const image1 = await WebImages.loadFromURLAsync(URL1, { priority: 'low' })
const image2 = await WebImages.loadFromURLAsync(URL2, { priority: 'high' })

Preloading

If you know what Images are going to be rendered soon, you can pre-load them using the preload(...) API:

WebImages.preload(profilePictureLargeUrl)

require(…)

A React Native require(…) returns a resource-ID. In debug, resources are streamed over Metro (localhost://…), while in release, they are embedded in the resources bundle. NitroImage wraps those APIs so you can just pass a require(…) to useImage(…), useImageLoader(…), or <NitroImage /> directly:

const image = useImage(require('./image.png'))

RawPixelData (ArrayBuffer)

The Image type can be converted to- and from- an ArrayBuffer, which gives you access to the raw pixel data in an RGB format:

const image           = ...
const pixelData       = await image.toRawPixelData()
const sameImageCopied = await Images.loadFromRawPixelData(pixelData)

EncodedImageData (ArrayBuffer)

The Image type can be encoded to- and decoded from- an ArrayBuffer using a container format like jpg, png or heic:

const image           = ...
const imageData       = await image.toEncodedImageData('jpg', 90)
const sameImageCopied = await Images.loadFromEncodedImageData(imageData)

Resizing

An Image can be resized entirely in-memory, without ever writing to- or reading from- a file:

const webImage = await WebImages.loadFromURLAsync('https://picsum.photos/seed/123/400')
const smaller  = await webImage.resizeAsync(200, 200)

Cropping

An Image can be cropped entirely in-memory, without ever writing to- or reading from- a file:

const webImage = await WebImages.loadFromURLAsync('https://picsum.photos/seed/123/400')
const smaller  = await webImage.cropAsync(100, 100, 50, 50)

Rotating

An Image can be rotated entirely in-memory, without ever writing to- or reading from- a file:

const webImage   = await WebImages.loadFromURLAsync('https://picsum.photos/seed/123/400')
const upsideDown = await webImage.rotateAsync(180)

Render into another Image

An Image can be rendered into another Image entirely in-memory. This creates a third image (the result):

const image1 = ...
const image2 = ...
const result = await image1.renderIntoAsync(image2, 10, 10, 80, 80)

Saving

An in-memory Image object can also be written/saved to a file:

const image  = ...
const path   = await image.saveToTemporaryFileAsync('jpg', 90)

Compressing

Images can be compressed using the jpg container format - either in-memory or when writing to a file:

const image      = ...
const path       = await image.saveToTemporaryFileAsync('jpg', 50) // 50% compression
const compressed = await image.toEncodedImageData('jpg', 50)       // 50% compression

HEIC/HEIF

NitroImage supports HEIC/HEIF format if the host OS natively supports it.

| | iOS | Android | |--------------|----------------|----------------| | Loading HEIC | ✅ | ✅ (>= SDK 28) | | Writing HEIC | ✅ (>= iOS 17) | ❌ |

You can check whether your OS supports HEIC via NitroImage:

import { supportsHeicWriting } from 'react-native-nitro-modules'

const image  = ...
const format = supportsHeicWriting ? 'heic' : 'jpg'
const path   = await image.saveToTemporaryFileAsync(format, 100)

Hooks

The useImage() hook

The useImage() hook asynchronously loads an Image from the given source and returns it as a React state:

function App() {
  const image = useImage({ filePath: '/tmp/image.jpg' })
  return …
}

The useImageLoader() hook

The useImageLoader() hook creates an asynchronous ImageLoader which can be passed to a <NitroImage /> view to defer image loading:

function App() {
  const loader = useImageLoader({ filePath: '/tmp/image.jpg' })
  return (
    <NitroImage
      image={loader}
      style={{ width: 400, height: 400 }}
    />
  )
}

The <NitroImage /> view

The <NitroImage /> view is a React Native view that allows you to render Image - either asynchronously (by wrapping ImageLoaders), or synchronously (by passing Image instances directly):

function App() {
  return (
    <NitroImage
      image={{ filePath: '/tmp/image.jpg' }}
      style={{ width: 400, height: 400 }}
    />
  )
}

The <NativeNitroImage /> view

The <NativeNitroImage /> view is the actual native Nitro View component for rendering an Image instance. It is recommended to use abstractions like <NitroImage /> instead of the actual native component. However if you need to use the native component instead, it is still exposed:

function App() {
  const image = …
  return (
    <NativeNitroImage
      image={image}
      style={{ width: 400, height: 400 }}
    />
  )
}

Dynamic width or height

To achieve a dynamic width or height calculation, you can use the image's dimensions:

function App() {
  const { image, error } = useImage({ filePath: '/tmp/image.jpg' })
  const aspect = (image?.width ?? 1) / (image?.height ?? 1)
  return (
    <NitroImage
      image={image}
      style={{ width: '100%', aspectRatio: aspect }}
    />
  )
}

This will now resize the height dimension to match the same aspect ratio as the image - in this case it will be 1:1 since the image is 400x400.

If the image is 400x200, the height of the view will be half of the width of the view, i.e. a 0.5 aspect ratio.

ThumbHash

A ThumbHash is a short binary (or base64 string) representation of a blurry image. Since it is a very small buffer (or base64 string), it can be added to a payload (like a user object in your database) to immediately display an image placeholder while the actual image loads.

For example, your users database could have a users.profile_picture_url field which you use to asynchronously load the web Image, and a users.profile_picture_thumbhash field which contains the ThumbHash buffer (or base64 string) which you can display on-device immediately.

• users
  • users.profile_picture_url: Load asynchronously
  • users.profile_picture_thumbhash: Decode & Display immediately

Everytime you upload a new profile picture for the user, you should encode the image to a new ThumbHash again and update the users.profile_picture_thumbhash field. This should ideally happen on your backend, but can also be performed on-device if needed.

ThumbHash (ArrayBuffer) <> Image

NitroImage supports conversion from- and to- ThumbHash representations out of the box.

For performance reasons, a ThumbHash is represented as an ArrayBuffer.

const thumbHash      = ...from server
const image          = Images.loadFromThumbHash(thumbHash)
const thumbHashAgain = image.toThumbHash()

ThumbHash (ArrayBuffer) <> Base64 String

If your ThumbHash is a string, convert it to an ArrayBuffer first, since this is more efficient:

const thumbHashBase64      = ...from server
const thumbHashArrayBuffer = thumbHashFromBase64String(thumbHashBase64)
const thumbHashBase64Again = thumbHashToBase64String(thumbHashArrayBuffer)

Async ThumbHash

Since ThumbHash decoding or encoding can be a slow process, you should consider using the async methods instead:

const thumbHash      = ...from server
const image          = await Images.loadFromThumbHashAsync(thumbHash)
const thumbHashAgain = await image.toThumbHash()

Using the native Image type in a third-party library

To use the native Image type in your library (e.g. in a Camera library), you need to follow these steps:

1. Add the dependency on react-native-nitro-image
   • JS: Add react-native-nitro-image to peerDependencies and devDependencies
   • Android: Add :react-native-nitro-image to your build.gradle's dependencies, and react-native-nitro-image::NitroImage to your CMake's dependencies (it's a prefab)
   • iOS: Add NitroImage to your *.podspec's dependencies
2. In your Nitro specs (*.nitro.ts), just import Image from 'react-native-nitro-image' and use it as a type
3. In your native implementation, you can either;
   • Implement HybridImageSpec, HybridImageLoaderSpec or HybridImageViewSpec with your custom implementation, e.g. to create a Image implementation that doesn't use UIImage but instead uses CGImage, or an AVPhoto
   • Use the HybridImageSpec, HybridImageLoaderSpec or HybridImageViewSpec types. You can either use them abstract (with all the methods that are also exposed to JS), or by downcasting them to a specific type - all of them follow a protocol like NativeImage:

     class HybridCustom: HybridCustomSpec {
       func doSomething(image: any HybridImageSpec) throws {
         guard let image = image as? NativeImage else { return }
         let uiImage = image.uiImage
         // ...
       }
     }

4. Done! 🎉 Now you can benefit from a common, shared Image type - e.g. your Camera library can directly return an Image instance in takePhoto(), which can be instantly rendered using <NitroImage /> - no more file I/O!