The fastest way to scan text on an iPhone or iPad

The updates of iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4 bring powerful text scanning capabilities to Apple mobile devices, allowing real-world text to be scanned directly into the app. This means that even if you write the address on a piece of paper, you can now scan it directly into Google Maps using your iPhone or iPad camera without any intermediate steps.

Although these devices have always had the ability to scan documents and extract text from photos, this new shortcut is undoubtedly the fastest and easiest way to do it now. However, this shortcut is only available for newer iPads, iPhone XRs and subsequent models (not available to iPhone X users), and does not support all languages.

If you have a device that supports this feature, you should definitely learn how to use it.

How to use Apple's "Scan Text" shortcut

This tutorial will be demonstrated using Apple's own Memo App, as the text scanning shortcut seems to be designed for this app, but you can apply the same principle to your entire mobile operating system. Open any memo, click the camera icon , and select from the four options that pop up. A camera window will appear on the screen.

Point the camera at what you want to scan and your iPhone or iPad will highlight the text it is recognizing. You need to make sure there is only one text source in your field of view, because the tool can only grab one block of text at a time and it will decide what you want to focus on. You can direct its attention by moving the device closer to what you want to scan or simply zooming with the camera. The selected text will be displayed as a preview in your memo.

[Related: Import data into Excel and Word using only your phone camera]

You can click the

Insert button to immediately add the scanned text to your memo, or click the Scan text icon (four corners around the square of three lines) to further thin. Make your choices. If you click this icon, the scanned text will be displayed as a preview in the camera window. You can click the highlight specific part of the text and click the Insert button to add only these text to your memo. This is very useful if you want to extract only a small piece of text from a larger document.

You can click

X in the upper right corner at any time or click anywhere in the memo to close the camera window. That's it. Well, almost that's it.

How to scan text in other iPhone and iPad apps

This feature is widely used on all devices that support it, far beyond the built-in Memo App. To use it elsewhere, just hold and release on any text input field and see if

scan text or its icon is displayed. If displayed, you can use the tool as described above and transfer text from your environment to any application you are using.

I can't test all available apps, but it works in Message, Safari, Reddit, Maps, Google Maps, and Instagram. You can't seem to scan text directly into the Chrome address bar, but you can use the standard Google search bar to scan.

Tips and Tips for This New Shortcut

While this feature highlights only one block of text at a time, if there are multiple sources of text in the camera's field of view, you can guide it to focus on the target. For example, if it is picking up the brand name of the soda jug on the table next to the title of the book you are trying to scan, you can click near the book to remove the highlighted area from the drink. But this is not reliable, it may return to its original choice or be attracted to texts elsewhere in the field of view. When trying to scan text, it is best to move all unnecessary text out of view.

While the camera can be extremely enlarged, the quality of any letter in the field of view will decrease and become difficult to recognize. For example, I can't get it to read the "No Parking" sign on the street opposite my sixth floor apartment.

Lastly, scanning and printing text works best, but you can also recognize handwritten text—the more neat the handwriting, the easier it is for Apple to read. However, shortcuts accurately identify text written vertically (such as text on book binding) or even inverted text. Direction is not a problem, even your scribbled notes.

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