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Optical character recognition, or OCR for short, is not new. We’ve been using it for years, and aside from occasional improvements in accuracy, its use has remained largely unchanged. It can identify text from photos, translate it, or use it to initiate web searches. Gboard, the default keyboard on many Android smartphones and tablets, has a useful new feature that uses OCR.
The latest update to Gboard on Android introduces a new feature called “Scan Text,” which adds OCR functionality to the keyboard app. This feature is designed to make extracting text from images more convenient. Access scanned text from the Gboard feature grid and easily drag it to your toolbar for quick access.
After you give Gboard the necessary camera permissions, you’ll see a viewfinder that takes up more than half of your screen. You can capture an image of the text you want to scan by tapping the designated button. Gboard will then highlight any text it detects on the captured image. From there, you can simply select the portion of text you want and insert it into the required text field.
This feature remains active after you insert text, so you can continue selecting and inserting additional text as needed. You can also tap the back arrow to go back to the camera view again, or use the close button to switch to the full keyboard interface.
Most texts probably won’t use this. Unless it’s very long, it may be easier to type something in manually. However, if the text is in an unrecognized language or alphabet (such as an Asian language), it may actually be easier to trust the OCR and copy and paste.
It looks like the feature is currently rolling out for some users, but in my case I haven’t seen it on my phone yet. However, while you might be lucky if you click “Update” in the app now, it could take weeks (or months) for it to be applied to all your phones and tablets. If you don’t already have Gboard, you can download it from the Play Store.
Source: 9to5Google
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