Reading words out of a picture (called OCR, short for optical character recognition) can save you a lot of retyping. How accurate it is depends on the picture you start with far more than on the tool.
What reads well
Clear, straight, well-lit pictures with dark printed text on a plain background give the best results. A screenshot is ideal, because the letters are crisp and perfectly straight. A good scan of a printed page comes a close second. A photo of a page taken in good light from directly above is usually fine.
Photographing a page
Take the picture from directly above, with the phone parallel to the page, so the lines of text run straight across. Fill the frame with the text. Avoid glare on glossy paper by tilting the page slightly or moving the light. Avoid shadows from your hand or phone. Tap the screen to focus and keep the phone steady.
If a book page curves into the spine, the lines will bend and the reading gets worse. Press the page flat if you can, or photograph each half separately.
Choose the right language first
The reader uses the language to recognise letters, so choose it before you start. Our page supports English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Hindi and Arabic. If you pick the wrong one, the result is jumbled, often with strange accents. Each language needs a small reading file, which is fetched the first time you use it and then kept by your browser.
What is hard
Handwriting, decorative fonts, very small text, low contrast such as grey on white, and curved or crumpled pages are much harder. Blurry pictures and pictures with a busy background behind the text also reduce accuracy. If a first attempt is poor, a second photo taken more carefully will usually do better than any setting.
Check and tidy the result
Always read the result before you rely on it, especially numbers. Characters that look alike are the usual mistakes: the capital letter I, the number 1 and a lowercase l; the letter O and the number 0. For a receipt, an invoice or a phone number, compare against the original.
When you are happy, press Copy text to paste it into a document, or Save .txt to keep it as a file. Then correct line breaks and any stray characters in your word processor.
Privacy
The picture is read inside your browser and never uploaded. That makes the page a reasonable choice for documents you would rather not send to a stranger's server, such as letters, forms and notes. Afterwards, delete the pictures if you do not need them.