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With the arrival of iOS 15, the integrated text recognition called Live Text allows us to capture phone numbers from any photo, web page or screenshot.
As many will know, with the arrival of the iOS 15 versionmobile text recognition is built right into Camera, Photos, and the Safari browser, so you can recognize and capture real-world text on your iPhone.
It has been called ‘Live Text’ (‘Live Text’ in English) and it is very simple to use, since it is enough to point the camera towards something that has text and your iPhone does the rest. You’ll see a yellow square bracketed box around the text area and a small circular button in the bottom right corner.
You just have to look for the text button marked in yellow and press it to enable the desired text selection. You will be able to select the desired one by sliding across the mobile screen as you would with any other application.
You can copy the text, select all or search terms. It’s smart enough to recognize addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses so you can find it on Maps, start a phone call, or send it in the mail.
How to make a call with Live Text
Using a compatible mobile (an iPhone XS/XR or later, as well as a recent iPad with a data connection), follow the steps below:
- In the ‘Camera’ app, point to any text on a printed object or screen that contains a phone number.
- When the yellow-orange rounded corners surround the text in question, click on the ‘Live Text’ button (the icon represents text inside square brackets or rounded corners).
- The phone number on the screen will have a gray underline below it. Click above.
- In the menu that appears, tap on ‘Call ’ if the number is correct.
As you can see, ‘Live Text’ works both with the photos you take at a given moment and with those you have stored in your library. For example, you may have taken a photo of a friend at a restaurant with words visible in the background of a building.
With ‘Live Text’, it is possible to select that text and then select ‘Search’ from the options that appear to get more information, including the restaurant shown in the image, which helps to know its location.
‘Live Text’ has plenty of use cases, as it also works with screenshots, quick views and even photos that are captured from any web page. Try it with your iPhone and you will see that you start to take full advantage of the function.
