Blurhash

🖼️ Give your users the loading experience they want.

Install via npm:

npm i react-native-blurhash
npx pod-install

BlurHash is a compact representation of a placeholder for an image. Instead of displaying boring grey little boxes while your image loads, show a blurred preview until the full image has been loaded.

The algorithm was created by woltapp/blurhash, which also includes an algorithm explanation.

Example Workflow

In order to use the Blurhash component, you have to already have a Blurhash string. See the blurha.sh page to create example strings. This is how I use it in my project: A user creates a post by calling a function on my server which expects a payload of an image and some post data (title, description, ...) The function on my server then generates a blurhash from the image in the payload using the C encoder stores the post data (including the generated blurhash string) in my database uploads the image to a content delivery network (e.g. AWS) Now everytime a user loads a feed of posts from my database, I can immediately show a <Blurhash> component (with the post's .blurhash property) over my <Image> component, and fade it out once the <Image> component's onLoadEnd function has been called. Note: You can also use the react-native-blurhash encoder to encode straight from your React Native App!

Usage

The <Blurhash> component has the following properties:

Example Usage:

import { Blurhash } from 'react-native-blurhash';

export default function App() {
  return (
    <Blurhash
      blurhash="LGFFaXYk^6#[email protected],[email protected][or[Q6."
      style={{flex: 1}}
    />
  );
}

See the example App for a full code example.

iOS Screenshot	Android Screenshot

Average Color

If your app is really colorful you might want to match some containers' colors to the content's context. To achieve this, use the getAverageColor function to get an RGB value which represents the average color of the given Blurhash:

const averageColor = Blurhash.getAverageColor('LGFFaXYk^6#[email protected],[email protected][or[Q6.')

Encoding

This library also includes a native Image encoder, so you can encode Images to blurhashes straight out of your React Native App!

const blurhash = await Blurhash.encode('https://blurha.sh/assets/images/img2.jpg', 4, 3)

Because encoding an Image is a pretty heavy task, this function is non-blocking and runs on a separate background Thread.

Validation

If you need to validate a blurhash string, you can use isValidBlurhash.

const result = Blurhash.isValidBlurhash('LGFFaXYk^6#[email protected],[email protected][or[Q6.')
if (result.isValid) {
  console.log(`Blurhash is valid!`)
} else {
  console.log(`Blurhash is invalid! ${result.reason}`)
}

Performance

The performance of the decoders is really fast, which means you should be able to use them in collections quite easily. By increasing the decodeWidth and decodeHeight props, the time to decode also increases. I'd recommend values of 16 for large lists, and 32 otherwise. Play around with the values but keep in mind that you probably won't see a difference when increasing it to anything above 32.

Asynchronous Decoding

Use decodeAsync={true} to decode the Blurhash on a separate background Thread instead of the main UI-Thread. This is useful when you are experiencing stutters because of the Blurhash's decoder - e.g.: in large Lists.

Threads are re-used (iOS: DispatchQueue, Android: kotlinx Coroutines).

Caching

Image

A <Blurhash> component caches the rendered Blurhash (Image) as long as the blurhash, decodeWidth, decodeHeight and decodePunch properties stay the same. Because unmounting the <Blurhash> component clears the cache, re-mounting it will cause it to decode again.

Cosine Operations

Cosine operations get cached in memory to avoid expensive re-calculation (~24.576 cos(...) calls per 32x32 blurhash). Since this can affect memory usage, you can manually clear the cosine array cache by calling:

Blurhash.clearCosineCache()

Note: At the moment, cosine operations are only cached on Android. Calling clearCosineCache() is a no-op on other platforms.

Resources

• this medium article. jesus christ amen thanks for that
• Native Modules documentation, especially the Swift part
• This cheatsheet gist thank you @chourobin.
• DylanVann/react-native-fast-image as a reference for native UI modules
• woltapp/blurhash of course