How to Compress Videos in Expo Without FFmpeg (2026 Guide)

If you've ever tried compressing videos in a React Native app, you've probably hit the same wall: FFmpeg. It works, but it adds ~9 MB to your APK, requires complex command-line arguments, and runs entirely in software — burning through battery and taking forever on longer videos. There's a better way. Modern phones ship with dedicated hardware encoders (MediaCodec on Android, VideoToolbox on iOS) that can compress video 50x faster than FFmpeg while using a fraction of the battery. The problem? Accessing them from React Native has historically required writing native code. Not anymore. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to compress videos (and images) in Expo using hardware acceleration — no FFmpeg, no ejecting, no native code. Whether you're building a chat app, social media platform, or any app that handles user-generated media — this approach will save you bandwidth, storage, and headaches. What You'll Learn How to compress videos with H.264 and HEVC hardware encoding How to compres