Gboard Discovers a Cool Camera Trick That Lets You “Scan Text”
What do you want to know Google is starting to roll out Gboard’s “Scan Text” feature to users, which looks a lot like Google Lens. Users can launch the mode and take a photo of something with text, and Gboard will attempt to copy it to their phone for easy pasting into messages and more. […]
What do you want to know
- Google is starting to roll out Gboard’s “Scan Text” feature to users, which looks a lot like Google Lens.
- Users can launch the mode and take a photo of something with text, and Gboard will attempt to copy it to their phone for easy pasting into messages and more.
- “Scan Text” was previously spotted in a beta version of Gboard and showed that the photo was not saved on your device; it simply exists for a moment before disappearing.
Google’s Gboard is reportedly rolling out a new feature for users that brings some camera work to their keyboards.
As spotted by Michael Rahman, Gboard received a new “Scan Text” feature that leverages a user’s camera. Interacting with the feature will open your camera, taking up a little more than half of your screen. A button will appear centered at the bottom with a tagline that says: “take a photo of the words to scan.”
Gboard will attempt to distinguish all the words in a photo, highlighted in blue, with tags at either end so users can make adjustments. You can then “insert” what the app captured from the photo into messages, notes, etc. The feature also shows a quick preview of what it has copied next to the insert button.
Gboard is rolling out a new “Scan Text” mode that lets you take a photo of text to insert into a text field. Several people have told me that this measure is being rolled out, but it may not have reached everyone yet. Let me know if you see this! pic.twitter.com/7fcs5vEpGTFebruary 22, 2024
Rahman adds that several users have come to him asking to receive the update. However, this does not appear to be widespread. It might take a little longer before everyone picks it up.
This new mode, which looks a lot like Google Lens, was discovered in development in November. In Gboard beta 13.6, it was discovered that users must first grant the app permission to use their camera before progressing. “Scan Text” should also be left open in case users are looking to take another image and paste more into a document or elsewhere.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that Gboard’s new feature doesn’t “save” the photo to your device. It just captures it for now for copy-paste purposes before getting rid of it.
Another feature discovered in a beta version of Gboard was Google’s work to improve the landscape typing experience. By turning a phone on its side, the keyboard transformed into a small floating window that users could move or resize. This change to automatically turn the keyboard into a floating entity eliminates the need to dive into Gboard settings.
