Gboard for Android has a Scan Text OCR tool [Gallery]

Google is adding a new built-in tool to Gboard for Android that lets you scan text using optical character recognition (OCR).

About APK Insight: In this APK Insight post, we unzipped the latest version of the app that Google uploaded to the Play Store. When we decompile these files (called APKs in the case of Android apps), we can see various lines of code hinting at possible future features. Keep in mind that Google may or may not ever ship these features, and our interpretation of what they are may be incomplete. Well, try activating the ones that are closer to completion, to show you how they will look when they are submitted. With that in mind, read on.

Text scanning, which appears alongside Translate and Proofread, requires that you first give Gboard camera permission. This will open a viewfinder square that takes up the bottom half of your screen. You “take pictures of words to scan” with the record button.

After that, Gboard will highlight the text it sees in the photo. Tapping highlights an entire line, but you can adjust that. This will bring up a lower screen with an “Insert” button while maintaining the cursor position.

After you’ve entered something, the Scan Text tool remains on the screen so you can quickly make another selection.

The operation is quite simple and should be faster than opening Google Lens, especially if you move the scanned text to the shortcut row while keeping the text. However, splitting the screen of a viewfinder and another app can be distracting. There are advantages to using a full-screen user interface, while this workflow does not save the image.

Since our initial use, the quality and accuracy of OCR has not changed compared to other Google products. We enabled it with the latest beta version (13.6) of Gboard for Android. Otherwise, Scan Text is not yet available.

Thanks to JEB Decompiler, which some APK Insight uninstallers use.

Dylan Russell contributed to this article.