Another reason why you will download the Google Keyboard app on your phone. Now includes scanning any text with the camera
Scanning documents with your phone is nothing new. We've already talked in the past about the best apps to do this, and Google has long allowed it to translate text from images through Google Translate. This technology, known as OCR, has come a long way since its inception.
And there's always room for someone to surprise us with. Thanks to 9to5Google, we learned that Google has embedded optical character recognition (OCR) technology in the Gboard keyboard app, allowing any text to be scanned from the keyboard. This can be especially useful for creating quick notes, even for instant messaging tasks.
It seems that the feature has not yet left the testing phase. They can be found within the Gboard feature grid and can also be dragged to the toolbar for quick access. After doing this, you will only have to grant keyboard permission to access the camera.
Once this permission is granted, we will see a captured view that will occupy half the screen. In it we will find a button with the text above it "Take a picture of the words to scan them". Gboard then points to all the text it finds on camera. You can click wherever you want to select the text range; there's also a preview and a button to insert the scanned text into a note or conversation.
Of course, this may be a more convenient way to use OCR technology without going through Google Lens. Everyone who has access to this feature says it has great accuracy, so hopefully it will be available to the general public soon.
- Keyboard application link: Gboard