Printer App How to turn a photo into text on iPhone
Tap OCR to Text in Printer App, pick one or more photos, and it hands back a .txt file with a Page heading per photo that you can share. It is a Pro feature with no free try, and it reads photos only, not PDF files.
★ 4.2 (38) For one sentence out of one picture, do not buy anything. In Photos you can usually press and hold on the words and copy them. Free.
The app earns its place when there are several photos: ten pages of a printed contract, a stack of recipe cards, a whiteboard shot from three angles. It reads all of them in one go.
The steps, with the two buttons
- Photograph each page flat and square, in even light. Do it in the Camera app; this feature takes photos from your library.
- In Printer App, on the Home tab, tap OCR to Text. If you are not on Pro yet, a Pro prompt appears instead.
- Pick the photos. Apple's on-device text recognition runs on each one, in its accurate mode with language correction on.
- A preview opens with the result. Tap Share to save the .txt to Files, or send it by Mail or AirDrop.
If you want the page kept, with words you can search and select, tap OCR to PDF instead. It builds a PDF whose pages are your photos, with an invisible text layer on top. The picture stays exactly as shot.
What the text file looks like
Each photo starts with a heading, Page 1, Page 2 and so on, then its lines of text. The number comes from the photo's position in the list, and a photo where nothing was recognised is dropped without renumbering the rest.
With four photos where the third is a blank wall, the file comes out in this shape:
Page 1 / ...text of photo 1... / / Page 2 / ...text of photo 2... / / Page 4 / ...text of photo 4...
Photos are also loaded in parallel, so Page 2 is not always the second photo you tapped. Read through the file once before you trust the order.
Where it goes wrong
- It breaks lines where the printed line broke, not where the sentence ends. A wrapped paragraph arrives as five short lines, and you will join them by hand.
- Shadows, glare, curved book pages and small type cost you words. There is no published accuracy figure, and no setting to pick a language.
- Handwriting is not something the app claims to read. Treat anything it returns from handwriting as a lucky bonus.
- If no photo gives any text, nothing tells you; the preview just does not open. Retake the photo closer and sharper.
- Portrait shots straight from the camera carry a rotation flag, and the OCR to Text path does not pass it to the recogniser. If a portrait page comes back empty or garbled, try OCR to PDF on it, which does pass the rotation, and copy the text from there.
| You have | Tap | You get |
|---|---|---|
| Several photos, want to edit the words | OCR to Text | One .txt, Page heading per photo |
| Photos you need to search later | OCR to PDF | A PDF with a hidden text layer |
| A PDF that is already a file | Not this one | The app does not read PDF files here |
| One sentence from one picture | Photos app, press and hold | Free, no app needed |
Privacy
Recognition runs on the phone and no photo goes to a server. The only copy of the text is the .txt file that you share yourself.
Questions and answers
Can an iPhone extract text from a photo without an app?
Is OCR to Text free in Printer App?
Can it read handwriting?
Can I run it on a PDF instead of a photo?
How do I get the text into Word or Pages?
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