Users will soon be able to copy text from photos using Microsoft PhoneLink, an application that connects Android and iOS to computers.
According to sources, this feature uses optical character recognition (OCR) to recognize text in an image. Users can then copy and paste the text into any other app.
This feature will work in the Phone Link app on Windows so it doesn’t depend on a specific type of phone. When viewing photos from the Photos section of the PhoneLink app, an icon called ‘Text’ will appear. Clicking this icon will highlight the text in the image, followed by options to select or copy the entire text.
OCR is a feature that is available in many apps, including Microsoft’s mobile Office app. Microsoft began testing text recognition functionality in the snipping tool late last year and later released it publicly. Now Phone Link is also offering similar features.
