Open a photograph with writing in it and, on clients that support it, the text becomes selectable. You can copy an address out of a screenshot, a code off a photographed form, a paragraph out of a page somebody photographed for you.
It is a small feature with a disproportionate effect: it turns pictures of text into text, which is what most of the useful pictures people send actually are.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Copy text out of a photo instead of retyping it.
- check_circle Know when it will work well and when it will not.
- check_circle Turn a photographed document into something searchable.
- check_circle Fall back sensibly when the recognition is wrong.
The words in the picture behave like words: select, copy, and paste them anywhere.
text_fields Pictures of text are everywhere
A surprising proportion of what gets sent in a messenger is text that happens to be in an image: a screenshot of a booking, a photograph of a sign, a page of a book, a form somebody filled in. Until you can select it, all of that is something you have to retype with your thumbs.
Recognition happens on the device where the feature is supported, so it is available offline and nothing about the picture is sent anywhere to make it work. Which matters given how often the thing you are copying is a code or an address.
The result is imperfect in predictable ways. Clean printed text on a flat surface comes out almost exactly right. Handwriting, unusual fonts, angled photographs and low light all degrade it, and the mistakes it makes are plausible-looking rather than obvious.
Four things it is good for
The third is the one that changes how you keep documents.
content_copy The address, the code, the number
translate A photograph you cannot read
bookmark Making a photo findable
warning Where it goes wrong
It turns a picture of text into text. Check the characters that look alike, and caption what you keep.
settings Using it
- Open the photo full screen Recognition runs on the opened image.
- Zoom into the text if it is small It improves the result.
- Select and copy as you would in any text Hold to start the selection.
- Paste and check it Especially numbers and anything case-sensitive.
- Caption the picture with what you copied If you are keeping it, so search can find it.
- Retake a bad photograph Rather than correcting the recognition.
This page turns a photograph into words. The curriculum step is what to do with them: hashtag hierarchies, captions as an index, and running Saved Messages as a searchable filing system rather than a pile.
At a glance
- 1Copy text from photos
Press on text in a photo to copy it.
- 2When it works
Clear, straight, well-lit text works best.
- 3Make it searchable
Paste the text as a caption so search finds it.
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