Direct import of text scanned with iOS Camera into User Notes

[sdbertrand]

As am I reading resources that I have in print from before I bought Accordance or that aren't available in the platform, I often like to capture key quotations that I believe are helpful in interpreting a passage in a User Note linked to that passage. (This is the next best thing to having the resource in Accordance itself.) Since scanning from the Camera app has been added to iOS, I have modified my workflow by scanning it, copying, pasting in an SMS to myself, then copying that SMS and pasting it in a User Note using my MacOS Accordance.

 

What would be even better would be to be able to open up a User Note in iOS and from that interface go to the Camera, capture the text, and then auto paste into the UserNote—all from my phone without leaving the app. I think this could be a really useful feature for many who want to make their usage of their User Notes more robust.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

I think macOS has an API where something like this can be implemented. I added it to my list for us to look into. Thanks!

[jlm]

19 hours ago, sdbertrand said:

As am I reading resources that I have in print from before I bought Accordance or that aren't available in the platform, I often like to capture key quotations that I believe are helpful in interpreting a passage in a User Note linked to that passage. (This is the next best thing to having the resource in Accordance itself.) Since scanning from the Camera app has been added to iOS, I have modified my workflow by scanning it, copying, pasting in an SMS to myself, then copying that SMS and pasting it in a User Note using my MacOS Accordance.

 

What would be even better would be to be able to open up a User Note in iOS and from that interface go to the Camera, capture the text, and then auto paste into the UserNote—all from my phone without leaving the app. I think this could be a really useful feature for many who want to make their usage of their User Notes more robust.

You can do this in iOS 17 as follows: start editing a User Note. Put the cursor where you want to insert text and tap a blank area near the cursor so you get the popup menu. Select AutoFill. From the submenu that pops up select Scan Text. Now you're in the iOS interface for inserting scanned text. You need to wait for it to recognize that the camera is pointing at text and then either push the Insert button to insert everything in the highlighted area of the image or tap the icon in the lower right so you can select the part of it you need before pressing Insert. I nearly always use the icon, because I'm just grabbing phrases from books. If you're still on iOS 16, it was easier with it to get into the text scanning interface: the icon shows up directly in the popup menu.

 

This functionality to insert text with the camera works in text editors on iOS generally.

 

Another useful trick is to OCR a screenshot when you have some text on your screen that you can't select: take a screenshot, optionally crop it to the interesting part, and then use the OCR icon at the top right to make the recognized text selectable. It usually takes a second or two for that icon to be enabled. After I copy the text, I just delete the screenshot.

Edited December 11, 2023 by jlm
FIx typo

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Nice! So do I need to keep this on my feature request list, or is it all baked in already?

[sdbertrand]

I tried it out and the feature doesn't work nearly as smoothly as it does in the Camera app, particularly getting the app to recognize a bloc of text and then selecting only a few lines of text to be copied. It does get a little better if I swipe the half-screen pop-up to full screen, but it still seems a bit arbitrary what text on a page it wants to focus on. If there are some ways to refine it to capture more of the "full screen" experience of using it in the Camera app, that would be great, but it might not be as high a priority given that there is at least some functionality through the built in iOS featuer.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Good to know. Thanks! I have it on my Feature Request list to look into as time permits.