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).

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: ^1.0.0   # 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. These are runtime permissions on Android 6+ — request them before opening the camera.

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.

Commercial plugin distributed via dartpub.dev — file issues on the plugin's page.