Hey everyone, I wanted to share a super useful trick I discovered for quickly grabbing text from the real world and getting it onto my computer using Google Lens. It’s a total game-changer for note-taking or grabbing info on the fly without needing any extra apps.
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First, fire up the Google app on your phone and look for the Lens icon – it usually looks like a camera. Tap it to get Lens running.
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Next, point your camera at the text you want to copy. Alternatively, if you’ve already snapped a pic, you can pick that from your gallery as well. Lens will highlight the text it finds.
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You will see a ‘Select Text’ button – tap that. Now you can drag your finger to select the exact portion of the text you’re after.
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Once you’ve selected the text, hit ‘Copy’ to copy the text to your phone’s clipboard.
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Now, to get this text onto your computer, tap the three dots on the right side.
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Choose ‘Copy to computer’ and Google Lens will start looking for nearby computers that you’re logged into.
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Make sure you have Chrome open and logged into the same Google account on your computer. Once it detects your computer, tap ‘Select’ to send the text to it.
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And boom! The text is now in your computer’s clipboard. Just use Ctrl + V to paste it wherever you want.
Things to keep in mind
- Keeping Chrome logged in on your computer is a good idea if you find yourself using this feature frequently.
- Even if Chrome is restricted from accessing your clipboard, the copy will still work. You just won’t receive a notification about the text you’ve copied.
- Copying text from images in your Gallery app works exactly the same way. Just select the image, use the Lens icon and select the text.
- For Lens to find your computer, keep a Chrome window active on your computer. If it can’t detect your system, hit the refresh button in the text-copy menu.
- The sharper and clearer the text, the easier it will be for Lens to grab it. If the text isn’t clear enough, Lens may not be able to extract it accurately.