OCR with Expo and React Native

Question

I'm trying to build a mobile app which performs OCR. I've decided to use React Native because it's cross platform and Expo for the SDK it provides. However, I'm not quite sure what the best way to perform OCR is. I've found this tesseract ocr library but it seems that I need to eject from expo to use that because it relies on native code. I've also tried using this pure js library but that depends on util from the Node Standard Library which isn't supported by Expo. I've also the anyline library but it seems that using Anyline requires payments which I'd like to avoid if possible.

Is the best path forward using the tessaract OCR library and ejecting from expo?

Answer 1

Seems like there is no expo-native way to perform OCR: https://expo.canny.io/feature-requests/p/support-optical-character-recognition-ocr

Answer 2

Did you try the firebase ml-kit on-device method for OCR? It works like a charm. I have used the same in my React Native App https://scantexttovoice.page.link/Zi7X (Open this link in android mobile). Previously I tried tesseract but the conversion rate was not good so I decided to go with firebase ml kit. You can use TensorFlow capability by creating a custom model in firebase as well