Windows Soon to Allow Users to Extract Text from Photos on Android

Microsoft's upcoming version of the Phone Link application will enable users to select and copy text from images synced from their Android phones. This feature is already available in the Release Preview Insider builds, indicating its imminent availability to the general public.

Phone Link, previously known as 'Your Phone', allows the synchronization of calls, messages, notifications, and images—and even full phone mirroring—from an Android device to a Windows PC. The app also has limited functionality with iOS devices, which only sync notifications, messages, and calls via Bluetooth.

The new feature in Phone Link will simplify the process of extracting text from images synced from an Android device. This development builds on the capabilities of the Windows Snipping Tool, which received text extraction features around the same time last year when Phone Link was updated to share image notifications. Previously, users could extract text from phone photos using the Snipping Tool; this update removes an extra step by integrating the feature directly into the Phone Link app. The text extraction function is available in Phone Link version 1.24051.91.0, and has been tested in the Insider Preview Build 22635.3646 (beta channel).

During testing, the optical character recognition (OCR) was fairly accurate, although it made more errors than similar text extraction tools from Samsung or Apple when used on the same page of a book. For longer excerpts, it might still be more effective to use copy and paste functions across devices, extract the text on the phone, and then send it to the computer. This integration not only enhances productivity but also leverages the growing capabilities of Microsoft's ecosystem to bridge the gap between mobile and desktop environments efficiently.