The Breaker Times

I’m something of a hoarder when it comes to interesting facts — I’ll see something online or in a photo, and a small voice in my brain says, “You’ll be able to use that reference somewhere, somehow. Save it so you can find it later!” Which is fine if it’s just a line or two of text, but what if that info is within an image — a photo, say, or even a drawing?

Luckily, back in 2021, Apple introduced a feature in iOS 15 called Live Text, which makes it possible for iPhone users to grab text, email addresses, phone numbers, and more from images. Live Text works with both handwritten and typed text and supports a variety of languages.

Once you’ve captured text from an image, you can paste it into a document, an email, a text message, etc., just as you would any copied text. (A suggestion: you might want to proofread it before you send or post it, especially if you’ve copied handwritten text — Live Text is pretty good, but it’s not perfect.) Just press on the selected text and choose Copy. You can also select Translate if you want to translate it to another language or Look Up to get more information.

You can use Live Text with your camera app or directly from Photos or Safari. Here’s how to capture the text in these three apps.

One of the handiest ways of using Live Text is on documents or objects that are around you in real time. If you have an iPhone XS or later, you can use the camera app to quickly grab some text — say, the name on a product label, or of a book you want to remember to buy — and drop it into another app. You don’t even have to snap a photo. It’s very easy:

• Open the camera app and point it at the text you want to copy. You’ll see a faint outline around the text, and a live text button will appear in the corner of the viewfinder.
• Hit the button, and you’ll get a pop-up with the text inside. Highlight the part of the text you want to copy (or hit Select All) and choose Copy.
• If there is an email address, phone number, or link, you will be given the option of interacting with it directly.

If you’re viewing any pictures with text in the Photos app, you can select and interact with text there. It works just like selecting actual text anywhere else on iOS: tap and hold on the text in an image and you’ll see the familiar-looking blue highlights pop up.

The search bar in Photos will also search for text within images in your photo library, which is handy if you know you took a screenshot or photo of a receipt and just aren’t sure when. Once you find it, you can copy it using the steps above.

Text can also be selected directly from images on the web in Safari. To grab text, just highlight the text in the image as you would any text, and hit the Copy button.

Update, August 30th, 2024: This article was originally published on July 1st, 2021, and has been updated to account for changes in the OS.