MILLIONS of iPhones have a clever camera trick that is genuinely life-changing.
You may have used part of it – even accidentally – but it’s more powerful than many people realise.
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It’s called Live Text, and it lets you quickly highlight and act on text found in iPhone images.
That might not sound too interesting, but it can be a real game-changer.
“Camera can copy, share, look up, and translate text that appears within the camera frame,” Apple explained.
“Camera also provides quick actions to easily call phone numbers, visit websites, convert currencies, and more, based on the text that appears in the frame.”
First make sure you’re using the latest version of iOS.
Go to Settings > General > Software Update and install any pending upgrades.
Then open the Camera app and position your iPhone so that text appears within the frame.
A yellow frame will soon appear around detected text.
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If this doesn’t work, it’s possible that the text is unclear or the image is too dark.
Once it’s worked, tap the yellow box and you’ll be given a list of options.
You can copy text, select it, or even look use Look Up for personalised web suggestions.
There’s an option to search the web, and you can also share the text via apps.
Perhaps most excitingly, it’s possible to translate the text from a foreign language.
This is an extremely useful iPhone hack if you’re on holiday and need to decipher a menu, sign or some other kind of instruction.
When you’re highlighting text, you can touch and hold it to grab specific parts of the text.
And quick actions may appear at the bottom of the screen, letting you make a phone call, visit a website, start an email or convert a currency.
You can also use the above features on photos that you’ve already taken.
Just head into your Photos app and try it on an existing image.
It’s important to note that you can also search for text in images to track down a photo.
If you go to the Search tab in your Photos app, you can type in a word or sentence.
And your iPhone will surface any photos with that word in.
This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
