Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iOS 15: How to Use Live Text to Copy and Paste Text From Photos

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
67,488
37,763


In iOS 15, Apple has added a new feature called Live Text that can recognize text when it appears in your camera's viewfinder or in a photo you've taken and let you perform several actions with it.

Apple_iPadPro-iPadOS15-photos-LiveText_060721_big.jpg.large_.jpg

For example, if you take a picture of a storefront that displays a phone number, you can capture that number to place a call or add to your contacts. You can also copy Live Text from your photos for making use of elsewhere. It's an incredibly simple, useful feature, and here's how it works in its simplest form.

  1. Launch the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad.
  2. Find a photo that has some words on show, such as a restaurant menu or product tag.
  3. Pinch to zoom the photo if the text appears small.
  4. Press and hold on the words, then drag the ends of the selection tool to highlight all the text that you want to copy.
  5. Take your finger off the screen, then select Copy from the contextual popup menu.
  6. Finally, switch to an app that supports text input, press and hold your finger where the cursor is located, then select Paste from the popup menu.
copy-paste-live-text.jpg


Did you know that Live Text also features optical character recognition? That means if you have a picture of a handwritten note in your photos, you can still copy it and then paste it as digital text.

Live Text also works with the camera app and other images on the iPhone, plus there are other features in addition to copy/paste including Look Up and Translate, so you can translate foreign language text found in a photo. Live Text works with the Spotlight search on the iPhone as well, which lets text in photos be located through a standard iPhone search. For more on what's new in the Photos app, we have a dedicated iOS 15 Photos guide that highlights all of the new features.

Article Link: iOS 15: How to Use Live Text to Copy and Paste Text From Photos
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/copy-paste-text-from-photos-ios/
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ElectronGuru, mbarto, KeithBN and 2 others
2013.1 said:
I wish it would live translate within the camera view like this
There was an app in the App Store (World something) that did that years ago but disappeared when Google started its service.
I'd rather not use the Google app.
Click to expand...
Amazon’s fire phone (if you remember that disaster years ago) did this with some camera mode called “firefly” I think and it was excellent, far better than Google’s version that is laggy and never seems to correctly translate all text. Sad they never brought it to other platforms
 
  • Like
Reactions: Razorpit, KeithBN, MrFootery and 1 other person
This is a good feature provided you took the picture or can view with the phone camera. I don't know if I will ever need this feature but, it is good to know it is available.

I use an app called TextSniper (for Mac) that takes it to the next level (so to speak). The developer is a forum member as well.

www.textsniper.app

TextSniper - Capture and extract any text from your Mac's screen | images

MacOS productivity app that allows quickly capture and recognize text from your screen. Easiest to use mac OCR software for extracting text from images, PDFs, presentations, online meetings and even videos
www.textsniper.app www.textsniper.app
 
  • Like
Reactions: skaboom, matrix07 and peanuts_of_pathos
I could have sworn there was a video posted in the last few weeks that was a quick 15 - 20 minute long video that covered the new features in iOS 15. If anybody has the link and a few moments of their time to reply with it that would be great. There’s a lot of cool little things I’m noticing in the iOS 15 beta. I took a year off and didn’t test iOS 14 after running into issues with the iOS 13 beta that were bad enough I restored from a backup to get back to iOS 12. First time I’ve had that kind of experience since the public beta program began. I decided to take the plunge again early last week but wasn’t reading a lot of articles about iOS 15 so I wouldn’t be completely spoiled when it finally was publicly released but now that I’ve got it I need to learn what’s new.
 
  • Like
Reactions: peanuts_of_pathos
I’m running the beta on my iPad, and this feature is a bit hit and miss so far. It doesn’t always recognise all the words.
hopefully with time it will improve.
 
  • Like
Reactions: peanuts_of_pathos
MacRumors said:


In iOS 15, Apple has added a new feature called Live Text that can recognize text when it appears in your camera's viewfinder or in a photo you've taken and let you perform several actions with it.

Apple_iPadPro-iPadOS15-photos-LiveText_060721_big.jpg.large_.jpg

For example, if you take a picture of a storefront that displays a phone number, you can capture that number to place a call or add to your contacts. You can also copy Live Text from your photos for making use of elsewhere. It's an incredibly simple, useful feature, and here's how it works in its simplest form.

  1. Launch the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad.
  2. Find a photo that has some words on show, such as a restaurant menu or product tag.
  3. Pinch to zoom the photo if the text appears small.
  4. Press and hold on the words, then drag the ends of the selection tool to highlight all the text that you want to copy.
  5. Take your finger off the screen, then select Copy from the contextual popup menu.
  6. Finally, switch to an app that supports text input, press and hold your finger where the cursor is located, then select Paste from the popup menu.
copy-paste-live-text.jpg


Did you know that Live Text also features optical character recognition? That means if you have a picture of a handwritten note in your photos, you can still copy it and then paste it as digital text.

Live Photos also works with the camera app and other images on the iPhone, plus there are other features in addition to copy/paste including Look Up and Translate, so you can translate foreign language text found in a photo. Live Text works with the Spotlight search on the iPhone as well, which lets text in photos be located through a standard iPhone search.

Article Link: iOS 15: How to Copy and Paste Text From Photos
Click to expand...
Er...what devices ?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Razorpit, BulkSlash, peanuts_of_pathos and 1 other person
Although this is handy, it's pretty lazy of people who makes sings with contact info to not put a QR code which leads to a vcf . It'd be heck of a lot more effective on billboards rather than relying on people to memorize a phone number.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MrFootery, peanuts_of_pathos and iLLUMI
Since I can't do it yet I am not going to read this yet, but if it's anything beyond copy and pasting regular text then they messed it up.
 
  • Like
Reactions: peanuts_of_pathos
Oh wow!! Years ago a close elderly relative used an iPhone to take pictures of some of his important documents and sent me the pictures in case I ever needed the information on his behalf. I just copied the writing on the pictures and pasted the writing into a document to have the information if ever needed. This is great!!
 
  • Like
Reactions: ElectronGuru, mbarto, Razorpit and 3 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back