iPadOS 16 Adds Handwriting Straightening Feature to Make Your Writing Neater

[MacRumors]

With iPadOS 16, Apple is continuing to improve the note taking and writing experience, introducing a new Straighten feature for text written with the Apple Pencil.

If you are taking notes in the Notes app or another app, you can now select all of your handwritten text and choose the "Straighten" option to neaten it up a bit. This won't help your handwriting, but it will change the arrangement of the writing on the page to better align it and to make it look more note like.

As you can see in our demonstration, the difference is subtle, but it does indeed work and it does make handwriting look just a bit neater. It should be helpful if you already have semi-neat handwriting that you just want to arrange better.

After using the Straighten feature​

Apple says that the iPad's Scribble feature now also supports emoji, allowing you to draw your favorite emoji and have it automatically converted to the emoji you're aiming for. We haven't been able to get this to work as of yet, so it is not clear if it's in the first beta, but it should be a useful feature for those who often use their Apple Pencil systemwide on their iPads.

Article Link: iPadOS 16 Adds Handwriting Straightening Feature to Make Your Writing Neater

 

[kc9hzn]

Do you hear that sound?! It’s the sound of a million doctors screaming out in agony!

 

[Seanm87]

So if a draw a poop emoji it will convert it?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

I really can't see a difference between those two images?

 

[TheDailyApple]

I’m not sure how I feel about this, one’s handwriting is personal.

 

[gaximus]

Do you hear that sound?! It’s the sound of a million doctors screaming out in agony!

I don't care how good the recognition works, doctors will never be able to use these features.

 

[ziggie216]

If Apple can turn my chicken scratch writing to in a piece of art.. that would really something amazing.

 

[antiprotest]

I really can't see a difference between those two images?

They should have made the lines more slanted in the original for the test. It was already too good.

 

[gaximus]

I really can't see a difference between those two images?

It's left justified now.

 

[antiprotest]

Do you hear that sound?! It’s the sound of a million doctors screaming out in agony!

I don't get it.

 

[kc9hzn]

I don't get it.

Jokes become unfunny if you explain it, but it’s a joke about doctors’ handwriting becoming legible.

 

[_Spinn_]

Very cool! Still would love to see pencil support on an iPhone at some point but I doubt it will happen.

 

[antiprotest]

I wonder how recent the device must be to support this. It could be another one of those things that uses "intelligence" and "machine learning" as an excuse to leave out older models when we all know that many of the older ones are able to do the same things, just slower.

 

[kc9hzn]

I don't care how good the recognition works, doctors will never be able to use these features.

Well, it’s offline AI, so it likely doesn’t violate doctor patient confidentiality in the way a cloud based system would work, but it’s just a throwaway joke about doctors having bad handwriting.

 

[antiprotest]

So if a draw a poop emoji it will convert it?

Only if it's the dry kind.

 

[xvrdmng]

 

[mjs916]

If Apple can turn my chicken scratch writing to in a piece of art.. that would really something amazing.

Same. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Sometimes I look back at what I wrote and can’t immediately decipher it.

Perhaps there is a government contract in cryptography waiting for people like us?

 

[kc9hzn]

I wonder how recent the device most be to support this. It could be another one of those things that uses "intelligence" and "machine learning" as an excuse to leave out older models when we all know that many of the older ones are able to do the same things, just slower.

I’d imagine it would work on anything with a Neural Engine, which looks like it’s anything with an A11 or later (or, in other words, any currently supported iPhone, since the 7 is getting dropped in iOS 16). In terms of years, any iPhone introduced in the past 5 years.

Edit: My bad, looks like the 5th, 6th, and 7th gen iPads (you know, the entry level ones) were introduced in the past 5 or so years and don’t have an A11.

 

[mjs916]

It's left justified now.

Not sure how I missed that!

 

[AngerDanger]

View attachment 2015493

Fine, if you don't want to play spot the difference…

 

[lazyrighteye]

Fine, if you don't want to play spot the difference…

View attachment 2015498

Ha! Only because I made it (before seeing your post) I'm going to share anyway.

 

[lazyrighteye]

It basically just left-justified everything.

 

[lazyrighteye]

Very cool! Still would love to see pencil support on an iPhone at some point but I doubt it will happen.

Agree!
Yes, well aware of Steve's perspective on styli. To be fair, when he made that "fingers" comment, I agreed with him. Phones were way smaller. But not that phones are falling out of pockets, I feel differently. These devices are now Field Notes-sized and Pencil support wound't be a bad thing. You don't have to use Pencil if you don't want to. But the option would be nice.

 

[macduke]

Now if it could only straighten each line, not just the edge where the text starts, automatically kern my handwriting and dot my i's and cross my t's then we'd be in business.

Also it's almost impossible in current macOS to write i's with multiple words after it. Try it, the auto correct will eat it forever. I had to copy and paste things. Even right clicking on it to change it back inserted it into the I'd it was trying to replace it with, like this: Ii's'd

I hate Apple's software sometimes. I swear my iPad Pro virtual keyboard was losing it's mind the other day putting in all kinds of junk letters. I think someone somewhere is typing loads of garbage into Apple devices to screw up their aggregate machine learning. Probably the general dumbing down of society is to blame.

 

[mw360]

It basically just left-justified everything.

All three of the lines also rotate very slightly