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API Reference

DocumentPicker

Provides access to the system's UI for selecting documents from the available providers on the user's device.

Platform Compatibility

Android DeviceAndroid EmulatoriOS DeviceiOS SimulatorWeb

Installation

expo install expo-document-picker

If you're installing this in a bare React Native app, you should also follow these additional installation instructions.

Configuration

Managed workflow

For iOS, outside of the Expo client, the DocumentPicker module requires the iCloud entitlement to work properly. You need to set the usesIcloudStorage key to true in your app.json file as specified here.
In addition, you'll also need to enable the iCloud Application Service in your App identifier. This can be done in the detail of your App ID in the Apple developer interface.
Enable iCloud service with CloudKit support, create one iCloud Container, and name it iCloud.<your_bundle_identifier>.
And finally, to apply those changes, you'll need to revoke your existing provisioning profile and run expo build:ios -c

Bare workflow

For iOS bare projects, the DocumentPicker module requires the iCloud entitlement to work properly. If your app doesn't have it already, you can add it by opening the project in Xcode and following these steps:
  • In the project, go to the Capabilities tab
  • Set the iCloud switch to on
  • Check the iCloud Documents checkbox

API

import * as DocumentPicker from 'expo-document-picker';

DocumentPicker.getDocumentAsync(options)

Display the system UI for choosing a document. By default, the chosen file is copied to the app's internal cache directory.
Note for Web: The system UI can only be shown after user activation (e.g. a Button press). Therefore, calling getDocumentAsync in componentDidMount, for example, will not work as intended.

Arguments

  • options (object) --
    A map of options:
    • type (string) -- The MIME type of the documents that are available to be picked. Is also supports wildcards like image/* to choose any image. To allow any type of document you can use */*. Defaults to */*.
    • copyToCacheDirectory (boolean) -- If true, the picked file is copied to FileSystem.CacheDirectory, which allows other Expo APIs to read the file immediately. Defaults to true. This may impact performance for large files, so you should consider setting this to false if you expect users to pick particularly large files and your app does not need immediate read access.
    • multiple (boolean) -- (Web Only) Allows multiple files to be selected from the system UI. Defaults to false.

Returns

On success returns a promise that resolves to an object containing { type: 'success', uri, name, size } where uri is a URI to the local document file, name is its original name and size is its size in bytes. If the user cancelled the document picking, the promise resolves to { type: 'cancel' }.