expo-video-thumbnails

Provides function that let you generate an image from video. This can be used for example to create a video gallery.

API documentation

• Documentation for the latest stable release
• Documentation for the main branch

Installation in managed Expo projects

For managed Expo projects, please follow the installation instructions in the API documentation for the latest stable release.

Installation in bare React Native projects

For bare React Native projects, you must ensure that you have installed and configured the expo package before continuing.

Add the package to your npm dependencies

npx expo install expo-video-thumbnails

Configure for Android

No additional set up necessary.

Configure for iOS

Run npx pod-install after installing the npm package.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome! Please refer to guidelines described in the contributing guide.

Changelog

Unpublished

🛠 Breaking changes

🎉 New features

🐛 Bug fixes

💡 Others

9.1.0 — 2025-04-04

💡 Others

• [Android] Started using expo modules gradle plugin. (#34176 by @lukmccall)
• [apple] Migrate remaining expo-module.config.json to unified platform syntax. (#34445 by @reichhartd)
• [iOS] Fix warnings which will become errors in Swift 6. (#35288 by @behenate)

9.0.4 — 2025-03-22

• Created getNativeThumbnailAsync(). Returns an image reference of the generated image. (#35240 by @mistermunchkin) (#35641 by @MisterMunchkin)

9.0.3 - 2025-01-10

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

9.0.2 — 2024-11-13

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

9.0.1 — 2024-11-12

🐛 Bug fixes

• [iOS] Run thumnbnail generation on background thread. (#32773 by @alanjhughes)

9.0.0 — 2024-10-22

🛠 Breaking changes

• Bumped iOS deployment target to 15.1. (#30840 by @tsapeta)

🐛 Bug fixes

• [Android] Fixed a crash when the source cannot be retrieved. (#28961 by @mrakesh0608)

💡 Others

• [Android] Made sure that MediaMetadataRetriever is safely released. (#29015 by @lukmccall)

8.0.0 — 2024-04-18

🐛 Bug fixes

• [Android] Enhanced resource management in VideoThumbnails module by ensuring closure of ParcelFileDescriptor and releasing MediaMetadataRetriever post-use. (#26100 by @hirbod)

💡 Others

• drop unused web name property. (#27437 by @EvanBacon)
• Removed deprecated backward compatible Gradle settings. (#28083 by @kudo)

7.9.0 — 2023-12-12

🐛 Bug fixes

• [iOS] Fixed an issue where timeFrame exceeding video duration failed to generate a thumbnail. Implemented clamping. (#25681 by @hirbod)

💡 Others

• [iOS] Replace legacy FileSystem interfaces usage with core FileSystemUtilities. (#25495 by @alanhughes)

7.8.0 — 2023-11-14

🛠 Breaking changes

• Bumped iOS deployment target to 13.4. (#25063 by @gabrieldonadel)
• On Android bump compileSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion to 34. (#24708 by @alanjhughes)

7.7.0 — 2023-10-17

🛠 Breaking changes

• Dropped support for Android SDK 21 and 22. (#24201 by @behenate)

7.6.0 — 2023-09-04

🎉 New features

• Added support for React Native 0.73. (#24018 by @kudo)

7.5.0 — 2023-08-02

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

7.4.0 — 2023-06-21

🐛 Bug fixes

• Fixed Android build warnings for Gradle version 8. (#22537, #22609 by @kudo)

7.3.0 — 2023-05-08

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

7.2.1 — 2023-02-09

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

7.2.0 — 2023-02-03

🎉 New features

• Native module on iOS is now written in Swift using the Sweet API. (#19561 by @fobos531)
• Migrated Android codebase to use the new Expo modules API. (#20541 by @alanhughes)

💡 Others

• On Android bump compileSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion to 33. (#20721 by @lukmccall)

7.1.0 — 2022-12-30

🎉 New features

• Native module on iOS is now written in Swift using the Sweet API. (#19561 by @fobos531)

7.0.0 — 2022-10-25

🛠 Breaking changes

• Bumped iOS deployment target to 13.0 and deprecated support for iOS 12. (#18873 by @tsapeta)

6.4.0 — 2022-07-07

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

6.3.0 — 2022-04-18

⚠️ Notices

• On Android bump compileSdkVersion to 31, targetSdkVersion to 31 and Java version to 11. (#16941 by @bbarthec)

6.2.1 — 2022-03-29

🐛 Bug fixes

• Fix Plugin with id 'maven' not found build error from Android Gradle 7. (#16080 by @kudo)
• Fix memory leak on iOS (imgRef was never released) (#16132 by @Hirbod and @bulgr0z)

6.2.0 — 2021-12-18

🎉 New features

• Thumbnails can now be generated with content:// paths on Android. (#15553 by @lukebrandonfarrell)

6.1.1 — 2022-02-01

🐛 Bug fixes

• Fix Plugin with id 'maven' not found build error from Android Gradle 7. (#16080 by @kudo)

6.1.0 — 2021-12-03

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

6.0.1 — 2021-10-01

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

6.0.0 — 2021-09-28

🛠 Breaking changes

• Dropped support for iOS 11.0 (#14383 by @cruzach)

🐛 Bug fixes

• Set thumbnail generator tolerances to 0 in order to accurately retrieve an image at a specific time. (#14253 by @tamagokun)
• Fix building errors from use_frameworks! in Podfile. (#14523 by @kudo)

💡 Others

• Migrated from @unimodules/core to expo-modules-core. (#13757 by @tsapeta)

5.2.0 — 2021-06-16

🐛 Bug fixes

• Enable kotlin in all modules. (#12716 by @wschurman)

💡 Others

• Migrated from unimodules-file-system-interface to expo-modules-core.
• Build Android code using Java 8 to fix Android instrumented test build error. (#12939 by @kudo)
• Change VideoThumbnailsOptions type definition of headers field to Record. (#13193 by @Simek)

5.1.0 — 2021-03-10

🎉 New features

• Updated Android build configuration to target Android 11 (added support for Android SDK 30). (#11647 by @bbarthec)

🐛 Bug fixes

• Remove peerDependencies and unimodulePeerDependencies from Expo modules. (#11980 by @brentvatne)

5.0.0 — 2021-01-15

🛠 Breaking changes

• Dropped support for iOS 10.0 (#11344 by @tsapeta)

4.4.0 — 2020-11-17

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

4.3.0 — 2020-08-18

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

4.2.1 — 2020-05-29

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.

4.2.0 — 2020-05-27

This version does not introduce any user-facing changes.