react-native-text-reader

A React Native library for extracting text from images using native iOS (Vision Framework) and Android (ML Kit) capabilities.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Platform Setup
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Expo
• Usage
  • Basic Example
  • Detailed Result
• Options
• ScriptOptions Enum
• Contributing
• License

Installation

Install the package with your preferred package manager:

npm install react-native-text-reader

pnpm add react-native-text-reader

yarn add react-native-text-reader

The published package is package-manager agnostic. Use whichever tool your app already uses.

iOS

cd ios && pod install

Android

No additional manual steps are required. Autolinking handles native setup.

Expo

This library uses custom native code (Vision + ML Kit), so it does not work in Expo Go.

It does work with Expo development builds and EAS Build (tested with Expo SDK 56):

npx expo install react-native-text-reader expo-dev-client

Add the config plugin to your app.json:

{
  "expo": {
    "plugins": ["react-native-text-reader"]
  }
}

Then create native projects and run a dev build:

npx expo prebuild
npx expo run:ios
# or
npx expo run:android

Usage

Basic Example

import TextReader, { ScriptOptions } from 'react-native-text-reader';

const imagePath = 'file:///path/to/your/image.jpg';

const lines = await TextReader.read(imagePath, {
  visionIgnoreThreshold: 0.5, // iOS
  confidenceThreshold: 0.5, // Android
  script: ScriptOptions.LATIN, // Android
});

console.log('Extracted lines:', lines);

read() returns Promise<string[]> — one entry per detected line.

Detailed Result

const result = await TextReader.readDetailed(imagePath, {
  script: ScriptOptions.LATIN,
});

console.log(result.fullText);
console.log(result.lines);
console.log(result.details); // confidence, frame, languages

Options

| Property | Type | Platform | Description | |----------|------|----------|-------------| | visionIgnoreThreshold | number | iOS | Confidence threshold (default: 0) | | confidenceThreshold | number | Android | Confidence threshold (default: 0) | | script | ScriptOptions | Android | Script model (default: LATIN) | | recognitionLevel | 'fast' \| 'accurate' | iOS | Speed vs accuracy (default: accurate) | | recognitionLanguages | string[] | iOS | Language hints, e.g. ['en-US'] | | customWords | string[] | iOS | Domain vocabulary hints | | useLanguageCorrection | boolean | iOS | Enable language correction | | minimumTextHeight | number | iOS | Ignore text smaller than this fraction |

ScriptOptions

export enum ScriptOptions {
  LATIN = 'Latin',
  CHINESE = 'Chinese',
  DEVANAGARI = 'Devanagari',
  JAPANESE = 'Japanese',
  KOREAN = 'Korean',
}

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Development in this repository uses pnpm.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.