React Native Example to Take Screenshot Programmatically

React Native View Shot

Here is an Example to Take Screenshot Programmatically in React Native. To take Screenshot of your screen we have an inbuilt Screenshot option provided by mobile manufacturers but you can also make this in your own Application too. To take a Screenshot we will use a very good library called react-native-view-shot. Which provides captureScreen API which is very easy to use.

To Make a React Native App

Getting started with React Native will help you to know more about the way you can make a React Native project. We are going to use react native command line interface to make our React Native App.

If you have previously installed a global react-native-cli package, please remove it as it may cause unexpected issues:

npm uninstall -g react-native-cli @react-native-community/cli

Run the following commands to create a new React Native project

npx react-native init ProjectName

If you want to start a new project with a specific React Native version, you can use the --version argument:

npx react-native init ProjectName --version X.XX.X

Note If the above command is failing, you may have old version of react-native or react-native-cli installed globally on your pc. Try uninstalling the cli and run the cli using npx.

This will make a project structure with an index file named App.js in your project directory.

Installation of Dependency

To use captureScreen we need to install react-native-view-shot package.

To install this open the terminal and jump into your project

cd Projectname

Run the following command

npm install react-native-view-shot --save

This command will copy all the dependencies into your node_module directory, You can find the directory in node_module the directory named react-native-view-shot.

–save is optional, it is just to update the react-native-view-shot dependency in your package.json file.

CocoaPods Installation

After the updation of React Native 0.60, they have introduced autolinking so we do not require to link the library but need to install pods. So to install pods use

cd ios && pod install && cd ..

Code to Take Screenshot Programmatically

Open App.js in any code editor and replace the code with the following code

App.js

// React Native Example to Take Screenshot Programmatically
// https://aboutreact.com/take-screenshot-programmatically/

// import React in our code
import React, {useState} from 'react';

// import all the components we are going to use
import {
  SafeAreaView,
  StyleSheet,
  Text,
  View,
  Image,
  TouchableOpacity,
} from 'react-native';

// import CaptureScreen
import {captureScreen} from 'react-native-view-shot';

const App = () => {
  const [imageURI, setImageURI] = useState(
    'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AboutReact/sampleresource/master/sample_img.png',
  );
  const [savedImagePath, setSavedImagePath] = useState('');

  const takeScreenShot = () => {
    // To capture Screenshot
    captureScreen({
      // Either png or jpg (or webm Android Only), Defaults: png
      format: 'jpg',
      // Quality 0.0 - 1.0 (only available for jpg)
      quality: 0.8, 
    }).then(
      //callback function to get the result URL of the screnshot
      (uri) => {
        setSavedImagePath(uri);
        setImageURI(uri);
      },
      (error) => console.error('Oops, Something Went Wrong', error),
    );
  };

  return (
    <SafeAreaView style={{flex: 1}}>
      <View style={styles.container}>
        <Text style={styles.titleText}>
          React Native Example to Take Screenshot Programmatically
        </Text>
        <Image
          source={{uri: imageURI}}
          style={{
            width: 200,
            height: 300,
            resizeMode: 'contain',
            marginTop: 5
          }}
        />
        <TouchableOpacity
          style={styles.buttonStyle}
          onPress={takeScreenShot}>
          <Text style={styles.buttonTextStyle}>
            Take Screenshot
          </Text>
        </TouchableOpacity>
        <Text style={styles.textStyle}>
          {
            savedImagePath ?
            `Saved Image Path\n ${savedImagePath}` : ''
          }
        </Text>
      </View>
    </SafeAreaView>
  );
};

export default App;

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
    backgroundColor: 'white',
    padding: 10,
    alignItems: 'center',
  },
  titleText: {
    fontSize: 22,
    textAlign: 'center',
    fontWeight: 'bold',
  },
  textStyle: {
    textAlign: 'center',
    padding: 10,
  },
  buttonStyle: {
    fontSize: 16,
    color: 'white',
    backgroundColor: 'green',
    padding: 5,
    minWidth: 250,
  },
  buttonTextStyle: {
    padding: 5,
    color: 'white',
    textAlign: 'center',
  },
});

To Run the React Native App

Open the terminal again and jump into your project using.

cd ProjectName

1. Start Metro Bundler

First, you will need to start Metro, the JavaScript bundler that ships with React Native. To start Metro bundler run following command

npx react-native start

Once you start Metro Bundler it will run forever on your terminal until you close it. Let Metro Bundler run in its own terminal. Open a new terminal and run the application.

2. Start React Native Application

To run the project on an Android Virtual Device or on real debugging device

npx react-native run-android

or on the iOS Simulator by running (macOS only)

npx react-native run-ios

Download Source Code

Output Screenshots

Android

IOS

   

This is how you can take a screenshot programmatically. If you have any doubts or you want to share something about the topic you can comment below or contact us here. There will be more posts coming soon. Stay tuned!

Hope you liked it. 🙂