Using the Amazing New Live Text Feature On Your iPhone

Hi., this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using Live Text on the iPhone. 

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So Live Text is a new feature of iOS 15, iPad OS 15, and will be coming soon to macOS in Monterey. Basically what it allows you to do is select text in a photo and then copy that text and you can paste it as regular text into a text document. 

Let's start off here in the Photos App. Here I've got a photo and it's just a regular photo of a sign and there's some text on the sign. The easiest way to start a selection is just to double tap onto text and then extend the selection. Then you can do various things here. Like, for instance, you could simply lookup words, you can translate, you could have the words spoken, or you could share them. 

Let's just try copying. Now I'm going to switch to Notes and tap here and Paste. As you could see here it works pretty well despite the fact that these were carved letters into wood in the wilderness. Here's a much more detailed sign. There's some text here that I would like to copy. You see I have to zoom in quite a bit but I'm still able to double click here. I could just use Select All and it's going to select everything it finds in this image. Now I can tap again and let's Copy and then let's go to Notes and Paste in and see what we get. You could see there's a lot of information here that it was able to get even though the text was really small. 

Here'a another situation where it comes in handy. Say you need to copy the serial number off the back of a TV. You could type it all out but now you could actually Copy it right from the image and then Paste it into an email or whatever you need. Here's a whole page of information that I wanted to have as text. But the best I could do was take a photo of a sign. So here I can select all of that, tap again, Copy, and now in Notes I could Paste it and I get all of the text. 

It could come in handy if you're at a presentation and somebody shows you something on the screen. A lot of people take pictures of those things but now you could actually get these and then copy all the text and then paste it in somewhere. If you see a passage from a book you want to copy you can do it here too. Notice that in addition to being able to select text and copy it there's also this little icon here showing you it's found text. If you tap that it will show you exactly what text it has found. 

But it works in more apps than just Photos. As a matter of fact it works in Safari. So say you're in Safari, you're browsing and you come across an image that has text in it. You could actually click and hold on an image here and it will start selecting the text. Then you have all the different options here. Copy and Paste in. It works in Mail too. So here I've gotten an image with some text in it. I can double click on the image. It opens it up and if I double click on the text there, you could see I could select it, and Copy that text. 

So you could see how this could be useful for all sorts of different things. It's not always perfect. The image should be pretty clear and well lit for the best results. Sometimes it doesn't get the words quite right, of course. I mean it's got to translate letters of different character styles and everything. But it certainly could come in handy.

Now instead of double tapping to select text you can also do things with different types of text. For instance here is an email address. I'm going to long press on the email address. It will figure out it's an email address and then allow me to send a new Mail message or do other things with that email address. So I don't have to type in an email address that I see on a printed page or I have captured in a photo. If it's a physical address it will recognize that as well and will bring up a map. You can get directions or open it up in the Maps App. You can even add it to Contacts. For a phone number a long press on that will allow you to call the phone number or send a text message, FaceTime, add to Contacts. If it's a date and time then if you long press that you can start a calendar event for it or create a reminder. If you need to translate some text you can select it with a double tap, select the text, and then use Translate and it will bring up the system-wide translator here with the translation. You can have it spoken. You can Copy the translation. You can change the language if it got it wrong. 

But here's what may be the best part of the whole thing. You don't have to take a picture in order to use this. You could go to the Camera App until you have a piece of paper or a sign. Notice the yellow brackets that form around the text? That shows that it has recognized some text in there. Instead of using this button to take a photo use this button that will appear here that will just capture the text. Now you can Copy the text but also can do all those other things I showed like long pressing on this email address here, or the address, phone number, or the time. You could even double click inside to Copy some of the text or do your quick translation all without actually having to save the picture. 

So you should really get familiar with this new feature of your iPhone. Try it out. Take a walk and look at different signs and different things you see. Try capturing text in them and then when you need to use it you'll know how. 

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.