The General Text Recognition SDK lets Android and iOS apps recognize text on-device in offline environments. It is lightweight and delivers recognition results in seconds.
Starting May 12, 2026, the Alibaba Cloud Vision Intelligence Platform will no longer issue new licenses for its Offline SDK products. Customers who have already purchased licenses can continue to use the service without interruption.
Key advantages
Extensive character support: Recognizes over 6,100 characters with a compact model of only 1.5 MB, covering most common use cases.
Robust performance in complex scenes: Supports recognition from a video stream. By processing multiple frames, the SDK overcomes the limitations of single-image recognition, which often depends on high image quality. This multi-frame fusion strategy enhances both accuracy and speed, reducing errors caused by challenging conditions like poor lighting or awkward camera angles.
Balanced accuracy and performance: The SDK delivers fast, precise offline recognition in seconds even on low-to-mid-range devices without compromising accuracy.
Use cases
General text recognition: Recognizes text from various sources, including books, magazines, and identity documents.
Prerequisites
You must activate and authorize the SDK before you can use it. For more information, see Activate and authorize the Offline SDK.
Billing
See Billing of offline SDKs for pricing information.
Supported platforms
Android, iOS
Limits
Android: Version 5.0 or later. The device must have a camera and a gyroscope.
iOS: Version 10 or later. Supported on iPhone 5s and newer models. The device must have a camera.
Recommended camera resolution: For best performance, use a camera resolution between 640×480 and 1280×720 pixels. Higher resolutions may decrease processing speed.
To use the SDK on iPhone models older than the 5s, or on low-end Android devices, contact us.
Integration
This SDK does not transmit any data to the SDK provider. Therefore, if you use this SDK to collect personal information, you are considered the data processor. The SDK provider is not a data processor or a sub-processor. You must fully inform users and obtain their authorization in accordance with relevant laws and regulations. When informing users, ensure that the SDK provider is not identified as a data processor or a sub-processor.
Android: Android integration guide.
Android demo: Android demo.
NoteYou must import a valid license file to run the demo, as it does not include one.
iOS: iOS integration guide.