The iPhone camera, like the rest of mobile phones, no longer only serves to take photos or videos. Over time, artificial intelligence allows it to be used for other applications, such as recognizing texts and objects. Hence you can translate a text in iOS 15 without the need to write it, simply through the camera.
We are going to explain how to use a function of this update in the operating system that serves that purpose. It will allow you to take full advantage of your iPhone’s camera to detect texts in images and translate them into the language you want, although you can only put it into practice with terminals that have iOS 15.
What is Live Text on iPhone
This is the name of the function that will allow to extract words and phrases from images and convert them to text format to do various things. Among them, you can copy it and translate it into another language, which greatly facilitates the understanding of images that are in another language.
This version of iOS has included this novelty because the camera is one of the pillars of iOS 15, which focuses on improving the performance and productivity of the same. The truth is that its direct rival was ahead in this field with Google Assistant, with Google Lens and its OCR (Optical Character Recognition) function.
Apple has followed in the footsteps of Google Lens and has integrated into the operating system, so you should not resort to an external app. Therefore, it becomes a fast tool, very easy to use and optimal for transcribing.
The function itself is one of the most prominent of all the novelties in iOS 15, as it makes life easier for the user and works really well. In fact, from the comparison between Live Text and Google Lens that we have made, we draw several conclusions. In short, Live Text has better text recognition on different surfaceswhile their extraction and translation are good, although a notch below Lens.
The operation is more than correct, not to say almost perfect. In the iPadizate test, the Live Text function worked efficiently, making only one glitch and a couple of imperfections in the translation of the text. The most relevant error was the landmark extraction in visual searchsuch as the Tolerance Bridge in Dubai.
How to translate text with the iPhone camera in iOS 15
If you are interested in this function to translate texts and you meet the essential requirement of having your iPhone updated to iOS 15, then you can follow the following steps to use this interesting function:
- When you find a text that you want to translate, open your iPhone camera and point to that text, be it a brochure, a poster or any other form.
- You will see that the camera frames the text between four orange corners. On the contrary, if this box does not appear, try to focus on it from closer, or else have the text completely framed, without leaving letters outside the image.
- Once those orange corners appear around the text, you will see that you will automatically have an icon to the right of the zoom buttons, in the form of four horizontal lines surrounded by a square. In the image it comes out much clearer.
- The camera will then be able to capture the text you have pointed to, which will be displayed in a menu that you can now manage yourself. It allows you select the portion of the text you want to copy or translate, either by dragging with your finger or selecting the entire text to apply the options.
- Whether you choose the whole text or just a part, what you can do is copy the transcript, perform a web search with «Consult«, Translate it or share it in other applications.
- If you click on «Translate«, Live Text will automatically detect the language you are looking for, showing you its translation on the screen. However, in that context menu you can change to the language you want.
You would already have the translation of your text ready in iOS 15 and through this very useful function. If you want do the same on an image in the gallery, you have to follow the same steps to extract the text and translate it. It’s that simple, since the same icon of the four horizontal lines will appear in the lower right corner.
Keep in mind that both to search the web and to translate, you need an internet connection. Instead, to detect the text and select it, you can be without mobile network or Wi-Fi, in case you are in a place with difficult coverage. Live Text is a function that you are sure to love if you have iOS 15, because of its integration into the system and its optimal performance.