Richard Coburger shows how to use iOS 15's Live Text to copy model and serial numbers straight from your camera. Works on iPhone XS and newer. Grab text three ways: live in Camera, from saved photos, or through the keyboard to paste directly into fields.
Questions this video answers
iOS 15
iPhone XS or newer
Three methods (Camera live without taking a picture; from an existing photo; via the keyboard Live Text icon to insert into a text field).
Richard Coburger (the Blue Collar Nerd)
October 6, 2021
What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Coburger here, the blue collar nerd. And I come to you today bearing good news, especially for all you technicians out there. So you know how manually typing out a model number or a serial number really sucks? Well, I am here today to tell you that you never have to do that ever again. How, you ask? Well, it's with a new iOS feature that is now in iOS 15 called Live Text. And Live Text builds OCR into the native iPhone camera app. OCR is optical character recognition. So basically, when you point your camera at something with text or numbers, it is going to recognize that text or numbers and allow you to copy and paste it. Now, something important to note here is that this feature will only work on an iPhone XS or newer. So if you have an iPhone older than a Xs, then unfortunately you are out of luck on this particular feature. So there are three possible ways to do this way. Number one is from the camera app without taking a picture. So you just point your camera at whatever it is, the thing that has the text, the model or the serial number or whatever, and you tap this little icon and then you're able to copy that text. Method number two is from a photo that you've already taken. So you just go through your photos, find the photo that has the text you want to copy, and then you highlight it like you highlight any other text in iOS just by holding down on it, and then you can copy it that way. For what we're trying to do here, to copy and paste a model or serial number, that's probably not the easiest way to do it because that requires you to have to flip back and forth between either the camera or photo app and whatever app it is that you're trying to paste into. So the easiest way to do it, in my opinion, the way where you don't have to switch back and forth between apps, you just go to the text field, wherever it is that you're trying to put the model or serial number, and hold down your finger in that field. You'll get the option to paste like you always have, but you'll also get this icon, the Live text icon, tap on that, and then that will pull up your camera down where the keyboard normally is, get what you need in frame, and then tap that live text icon again. That will kind of take a freeze frame and allow you to select whichever text it is that you're trying to insert into that field. Then you would move on to the next field and do the exact same thing. Anyways, that's all I got for today. Just a quick tip for you. Be sure to hit like if you liked this video and found it valuable, be to sure sure to subscribe to this YouTube channel. If you haven't done that already, hit that bell icon so that YouTube notifies you anytime I upload a new video. Appreciate it. Peace.
