Image Cropper for NativePHP — a native image cropper & editor

Open a fully native crop & edit screen from PHP — the user drags, pinch-zooms and two-finger-rotates the image behind a crop frame, then you get a real cropped file back. Written in SwiftUI (iOS) and Jetpack Compose (Android), with one simple PHP API and zero third-party native libraries.

Features

• ✂️ Freehand crop — 2D drag, pinch-zoom and two-finger rotate, all at once
• ⭕ Shapes & presets — circle or rectangle; Profile / Square / Portrait / 16:9 / Cover / Banner / Story, switchable live in-screen
• 🎨 Adjust & filter — brightness / contrast / saturation and one-tap filters, baked into the output
• 🧩 Configurable — enable only the modes/tools you need (crop-only, adjust-only, filter-only, …)
• 🌗 Theme-aware — follows the system light / dark theme
• 📦 Zero dependencies — no third-party native libraries, no permissions, no network
• 📱 iOS + Android behind one PHP API

Requirements

• PHP 8.4+
• NativePHP Mobile v3 or v4 (nativephp/mobile: ^3.0|^4.0) — tested on iOS and Android against 4.6
• iOS 15+ / Android API 26+

Installation

composer require vipertecpro/image-cropper
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=nativephp-plugins-provider   # once per app
php artisan native:plugin:register vipertecpro/image-cropper
php artisan native:plugin:list       # verify "ImageCropper" + "ImageCropper.Open" appear
php artisan native:run ios           # or: android — rebuild so the native code compiles in

Requiring with Composer is not enough — an unregistered plugin does nothing. Always run native:plugin:register and confirm with native:plugin:list.

Usage

Call the facade from a NativeComponent, then handle the result event.

use Native\Mobile\Attributes\On;
use Native\Mobile\Edge\NativeComponent;
use Vipertecpro\ImageCropper\Events\CropCancelled;
use Vipertecpro\ImageCropper\Events\ImageCropped;
use Vipertecpro\ImageCropper\Facades\ImageCropper;

class Avatar extends NativeComponent
{
    public ?string $photo = null;    // an existing image path
    public ?string $cropped = null;

    public function crop(): void
    {
        ImageCropper::open($this->photo, ['preset' => 'profile']); // circular avatar
    }

    #[On(ImageCropped::class)]
    public function onCropped(string $path): void
    {
        $this->cropped = $path;      // a brand-new cropped file on disk
    }

    #[On(CropCancelled::class)]
    public function onCancelled(): void
    {
        // user backed out — nothing produced
    }
}

Display the result with native:image, e.g. a round avatar:

<native:image :src="$cropped" :fit="2" class="w-[96] h-[96] rounded-full" />

On NativePHP Mobile v3, the #[On] attribute isn't available — listen for the events with #[OnNative(...)] (from Native\Mobile\Attributes\OnNative) instead. Everything else is identical; the plugin itself is unchanged across v3 and v4.

Getting an image to crop

The plugin's input is a file path to an existing image or an http(s) URL — it does not capture or pick photos itself, so it has no hard dependency on any camera plugin. Any source works: the filesystem, a bundled asset, a picker of your choice, or a remote image.

// Crop an image that lives on your CDN/API — the plugin downloads it
// natively (themed loading screen with Cancel), then opens the editor:
ImageCropper::open($user->avatar_url, ['preset' => 'profile']);   // an http(s) URL

Only croppable image formats are accepted (jpg, jpeg, png, gif, webp, bmp, heic, heif, avif): a source with any other extension throws an InvalidArgumentException immediately, and the native side additionally verifies the actual content decodes as an image (extensions can lie) — undecodable content fires CropCancelled, as do download failures.

If you need a picker, nativephp/mobile-camera is convenient (listed under suggest, not require). Install and register it separately, then hand its result path to ImageCropper::open().

API

ImageCropper::open(string $pathOrUrl, array $options = []): void;

The crop experience is configurable so one plugin covers many use cases.

Option	Values	Default
preset	profile (circle), square, portrait, landscape, cover, banner, story	—
shape	circle | rect (overrides the preset)	rect
aspectRatio	width / height, e.g. 16/9 (overrides the preset)	1.0
tools	any of ['zoom', 'rotate'] — which crop fine-tune rulers show	both
modes	any of ['crop', 'adjust', 'filter'] — editor modes offered; opens on the first	all three
presets	preset keys offered in the in-screen selector; [] hides it & locks the crop	all
outputSize	longest edge of the output, px	1024
theme	hex colors to match YOUR app — background, text, accent (Done), highlight (active states); omitted keys keep the system-adaptive default	system light/dark
id	correlation id echoed back on the event	null

ImageCropper::open($path, ['preset' => 'profile']);   // round avatar
ImageCropper::open($path, ['preset' => 'cover']);     // wide banner
ImageCropper::open($path, ['shape' => 'rect', 'aspectRatio' => 3.0, 'tools' => ['zoom']]);

// A bare, locked cropper — no preset switching, no colour editing:
ImageCropper::open($path, ['preset' => 'profile', 'presets' => [], 'modes' => ['crop']]);

// No crop at all — operate on the WHOLE image and export the full photo:
ImageCropper::open($path, ['modes' => ['adjust']]);   // colour adjustments only
ImageCropper::open($path, ['modes' => ['filter']]);   // one-tap filters only

// Render the editor in YOUR app's theme (identical on iOS and Android):
ImageCropper::open($path, [
    'preset' => 'profile',
    'theme' => [
        'background' => '#121417',   // editor background
        'text' => '#FFFFFF',         // labels & inactive icons
        'accent' => '#C2410C',       // the Done button
        'highlight' => '#C2410C',    // selected preset/filter, ruler value & fill
    ],
]);

When modes omits crop, the editor drops the crop frame entirely, shows the whole image, and exports the full photo (longest edge = outputSize) with the colour baked in.

Events

Event	Payload	Fired when
Vipertecpro\ImageCropper\Events\ImageCropped	string $path, ?string $id	The user confirms — $path is the new cropped file.
Vipertecpro\ImageCropper\Events\CropCancelled	?string $id	The user cancels, or the source couldn't be read.

Pass an id option when several crops could be in flight, to correlate the event.

Legacy web-view apps

A JS bridge is shipped at resources/js/imageCropper.js. Because the result is async, subscribe to the native events with the #nativephp On() helper — see the file header for an example.

Demo app

A full sample NativePHP app showcases the plugin with five ready-made examples (full studio, locked profile avatar, locked cover, adjust-only, filter-only) — each a tiny NativeComponent you can copy from:

It lives in the vipertecpro/supernativephp-image-manipulation repository on GitHub. Clone it, then:

cd supernativephp-image-manipulation
composer install
php artisan native:run ios   # or: android

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See the CONTRIBUTING.md file included with the package for local setup, the project layout, how it works, and how to extend the crop editor.

Changelog

See the CHANGELOG.md file included with the package for the full version history.

License

MIT — see the LICENSE file included with the package.

More free plugins for NativePHP

The Image Cropper has free companions, each installed with Composer and made the same way (hand-written Swift and Kotlin, one PHP API):

• Photo Kit — save a cropped image to the photo library, compress and resize it for upload, fix its EXIF orientation (vipertecpro/photo-kit)
• Message Composer — native email and SMS composers with attachments, e.g. to send the cropped photo (vipertecpro/message-composer)
• OTP Autofill — a one-time-code field with SMS autofill (vipertecpro/otp-autofill)
• Consent — the tracking-permission prompt and a privacy-choices store (vipertecpro/consent)
• App Analytics & Remote Config — analytics events and feature flags, works with Firebase (vipertecpro/app-analytics)

vipertecpro is an independent developer. NativePHP, Laravel, Apple, Google, Firebase and other names are trademarks of their respective owners; this package is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. iOS and Apple are trademarks of Apple Inc. Android, Google Play and Firebase are trademarks of Google LLC.

Image Cropper is a free plugin from vipertecpro.com, home of the paid plugins for NativePHP Mobile: Rich-Text Editor, Onboarding & Tours, Health Data and Native Charts.