Building a Camera App with React Native Vision Camera and Expo: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

Camera apps are where React Native gets a bad rap, so I cloned Obscura with Vision Camera and Expo to show it can feel native. Zoom, exposure, flash, front and back cameras, photo saving: all of it, on both Android and iOS.

This one is beginner-friendly, but you will touch native territory: prebuild, permissions, and running on a real device (simulators have no camera). I walk through every step in the video.

What's inside

• Set up Vision Camera permissions in app.json
• Generate native projects with npx expo prebuild and run on a real iPhone
• Animate the zoom and exposure controls with Reanimated and Expo Blur
• Capture photos and save them with Expo Media Library
• Toggle flash and flip between front and back cameras
• Build a permissions screen for camera, mic, and media access

Resources

CourseReact Native course

The control animations here come straight from Animations & Gestures: 62 minutes on Reanimated and gestures.