Gboard — Google’s keyboard app for smartphones — is selecting up a helpful new function that may make it simpler so that you can insert textual content, utilizing your smartphone’s digital camera. The newest model of the keyboard app provides help for a brand new “Scan Textual content” mode that makes use of optical character recognition (OCR) expertise to recognise textual content and enter it right into a textual content area. An identical function to scan and insert textual content can be obtainable on iPhone fashions operating on iOS 15.4 or newer variations.

A picture of the function shared on X (previously Twitter) by Mishaal Rahman exhibits how the brand new Gboard function works. Utilizing your smartphone’s rear digital camera, Google’s keyboard app will allow you to take a picture of textual content — this generally is a doc, a display or an object with phrases on it — after which makes use of OCR expertise to extract the textual content and insert it into your present app.

To ensure that the function to work, you may must replace the Gboard app in your Android telephone to model 13.9, which is presently in beta. Based on Rahman, customers have claimed that the function is now rolling out, however Devices 360 workers members have been unable to strive the function on a number of Android smartphones — so that you might need to attend till it’s formally introduced by the corporate.

When the Scan Textual content function is out there in your smartphone, it must be listed alongside different options like Translate, Sticker, One-handed, and Theme. The keyboard will immediate you to grant it entry to the digital camera permission, after which you’ll be able to start to make use of the function.

You possibly can level your telephone’s digital camera at some textual content and faucet on the seize button as soon as it’s contained in the half-screen viewfinder. You possibly can then choose the textual content that’s recognised utilizing OCR and insert it in your present app — this picture is deleted after the textual content is inserted. It’s also possible to transfer it to the toolbar that seems on high of the keyboard, for those who plan to make use of it typically.

The arrival of the function on Android comes two years after Apple introduced the same function to iOS 15.4, permitting customers to level their telephone at textual content so as to add it to the Notes app and textual content fields in different apps. It lets customers routinely choose textual content utilizing their iPhone digital camera — with out capturing a picture — and shows the textual content to be inserted because it updates in real-time. 

If the function is but to be enabled in your smartphone, you can even open the Google Lens app and level your digital camera at some textual content in an effort to extract textual content, copy, and paste it into one other app. Including the function to Gboard will simplify this course of, by eliminating the necessity to open the Lens app.