visionkit-rs

Safe Rust bindings for Apple's VisionKit.framework on macOS.

Status: v0.3.0 adds a Tier-1 async API module on top of full v0.2.x coverage of ImageAnalysisOverlayView, ImageAnalyzer, ImageAnalysis, and availability metadata for the iOS-only areas.

Quick start

use visionkit::prelude::*;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    if !ImageAnalyzer::is_supported() {
        println!("ImageAnalyzer is not supported on this Mac");
        return Ok(());
    }

    let analyzer = ImageAnalyzer::new()?;
    let configuration = ImageAnalyzerConfiguration::new(ImageAnalysisTypes::TEXT)
        .with_locales(["en-US"]);
    let analysis = analyzer.analyze_image_at_path(
        "examples/assets/live_text.png",
        ImageOrientation::Up,
        &configuration,
    )?;

    let interaction = LiveTextInteraction::new()?;
    interaction.track_image_at_path("examples/assets/live_text.png")?;
    interaction.set_analysis(&analysis)?;

    println!("transcript: {}", analysis.transcript()?);
    println!("live text overlay text: {}", interaction.text()?);
    Ok(())
}

Async API (`async` feature)

Enable with visionkit = { version = "0.3", features = ["async"] }.

use visionkit::async_api::{block_on, AsyncImageAnalyzer};
use visionkit::{ImageAnalysisTypes, ImageAnalyzerConfiguration, ImageOrientation};

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    if !AsyncImageAnalyzer::is_supported() {
        return Ok(());
    }
    let result = block_on(async {
        let cfg = ImageAnalyzerConfiguration::new(ImageAnalysisTypes::TEXT);
        AsyncImageAnalyzer::new()?
            .analyze_image_at_path("examples/assets/live_text.png", ImageOrientation::Up, &cfg)?
            .await
    });
    println!("transcript: {}", result?.transcript()?);
    Ok(())
}

Note: block_on must be called from the main thread. It pumps the Obj-C RunLoop.main between polls so that @MainActor Swift tasks can make progress. Use any executor-agnostic async runtime (Tokio, async-std, etc.) with the provided futures — just ensure RunLoop.main is pumped externally if not using block_on.

Highlights

ImageAnalyzer::is_supported and supported_text_recognition_languages
ImageAnalyzerConfiguration, ImageAnalysisTypes, and ImageOrientation
File-path based analysis through every public macOS analyzer overload: URL, NSImage, CGImage, CIImage, and CVPixelBuffer
ImageAnalysis::transcript and has_results
full LiveTextInteraction coverage for macOS ImageAnalysisOverlayView, including delegates, menu tags, selection metadata, tracking/content views, fonts, and subject analysis
VNDocumentCameraViewController, DataScannerViewController, RecognizedText, Barcode, and RecognizedItem availability metadata on macOS

Availability

ImageAnalyzer, ImageAnalysis, and LiveTextInteraction are available on macOS 13+.
LiveTextInteraction::text, selected_text, selected_attributed_text, selected_ranges, and LiveTextMenuTag require macOS 14+ because Apple introduced those overlay accessors after macOS 13.
VNDocumentCameraViewController, DataScannerViewController, RecognizedText, Barcode, and RecognizedItem are iOS-only Apple APIs. On macOS, this crate exposes them as structured availability metadata instead of pretending they exist.

Examples

cargo run --example 01_vn_document_camera_view_controller
cargo run --example 02_framework_smoke
cargo run --example 03_data_scanner_view_controller
cargo run --example 04_image_analyzer
cargo run --example 05_live_text_interaction
cargo run --example 06_image_analysis
cargo run --example 07_recognized_text
cargo run --example 08_barcode
cargo run --example 09_recognized_item
cargo run --features async --example 10_async_analyze

See COVERAGE.md for the audited VisionKit API matrix.

License

Licensed under either of Apache-2.0 or MIT at your option.

visionkit-rs 0.3.2