dartnative_camera

Camera for DartNative — a live preview widget, photo capture, and video recording on the device's native camera stack (AVFoundation on iOS, CameraX on Android).

See it in action

The viewfinder in photo mode, a switch to video, the phone turned sideways while recording, and the clip saved to Photos.

This is the plugin's example app. Tap to focus, pinch to zoom, pick an aspect ratio, and take a photo or record a video from the same screen. Rotation is smooth, with no freeze or stutter. Photos and videos save straight to the phone's gallery. The same example is in the playground app as Camera.

Why you'll like it

• A real preview widget — drop CameraPreview into your tree and you get a hardware-backed viewfinder, with pinch-to-zoom and tap-to-focus on by default.
• Photos and video from one controller — takePicture(), startVideoRecording() / stopVideoRecording(), flash, zoom, focus and exposure points.
• Frame streaming when you need it — startImageStream() hands you CameraImage frames for ML, scanning, or your own processing.

Highlights

• DartNativeCamera.availableCameras() → the device's CameraDescriptions (front / back).
• CameraController(description, ResolutionPreset.high, …) → initialize(), then drive capture, flash, zoom, focus and recording. Optionally pass videoQuality: VideoQuality.fhd — both are honoured on iOS and Android, and the controller uses the higher of the two.
• CameraPreview(controller: …) — the live viewfinder widget (pinch-to-zoom, tap-to-focus).
• takePicture() / startVideoRecording() / stopVideoRecording() — return a file path.
• startImageStream() → a Stream<CameraImage> of live frames; saveToGallery(path).

Install

dependencies:
  dartnative_camera: ^1.0.1   # from dartpub.dev

dn pub get

Register the plugin once, in main():

void main() {
  DartNativePluginRegistrant.registerAll();
  runApp(const MyApp());
}

Quick look

Pick a camera and start the preview

import 'package:dartnative_camera/dartnative_camera.dart';

final cameras = await DartNativeCamera.availableCameras();
final back = cameras.firstWhere((c) => c.lensDirection == CameraLensDirection.back);

final controller = CameraController(back, ResolutionPreset.high);
await controller.initialize();

// In your build():
CameraPreview(controller: controller);

Take a photo

final path = await controller.takePicture();   // file path to the JPEG

Record video

await controller.startVideoRecording();
// …later…
final videoPath = await controller.stopVideoRecording();

Flash, zoom, focus

controller.setFlashMode(FlashMode.auto);
controller.setZoomLevel(2.0);            // clamped 1×–8×
controller.setFocusPoint(0.5, 0.5);      // normalized point

Stream frames

final frames = await controller.startImageStream();
frames.listen((CameraImage image) {
  // image.bytes, image.width, image.height — feed your ML / scanner
});
// …later…
await controller.stopImageStream();

The preview is a native view rendered through DartNative's view bridge (ViewType range 1020–1029), so it composes with the rest of your Dart UI.

Platform setup

iOS

Add usage descriptions to your app's Info.plist — iOS shows the system permission prompt the first time the camera (or microphone) is accessed:

<key>NSCameraUsageDescription</key>
<string>Used to take photos and record video.</string>
<key>NSMicrophoneUsageDescription</key>
<string>Used to record audio with video.</string>

(The microphone key is only needed if you record video with audio — the default.)

Android

The plugin's manifest already declares CAMERA and RECORD_AUDIO, so there's nothing to add. initialize() asks for them at runtime the first time (Android 6+); a refused grant throws a CameraException with code CameraAccessDenied.

Orientation — pin the UI, rotate only the capture

Camera UIs are portrait-pinned — Apple's Camera never rotates its screen. The pin freezes ONLY the UI: rotating the device still captures landscape photos and videos, because the capture pipeline follows the physical orientation. Pin your camera screen on entry and release on exit:

// initState
SystemChrome.setPreferredOrientations([DeviceOrientation.portraitUp]);
// dispose
SystemChrome.setPreferredOrientations(DeviceOrientation.values);

and feed the capture pipeline from DeviceOrientationListener (see the example's _onOrientation). The example app is also portrait-only in its project settings, so this mistake never shows there — but hosted in a rotation-enabled app, an unpinned camera screen spins its chrome and letterboxes the preview on rotation.

Example

The example/ app lists the cameras, shows a live preview, and captures both photos and video — borrow from it freely.

Credits & license

Adapted from Flutter's official camera plugin — camera_avfoundation (iOS) and camera_android_camerax (Android), BSD-3-Clause — reworked to run natively on DartNative.

First-party DartNative plugin, free to use in any DartNative app. Distributed through dartpub.dev; report issues on the plugin's page.