This week I told three separate friends about using their phones to create usable text from notes … and all three were astonished and then grateful. I’m sharing this in case this is something you need, too!

Hold the camera (like you are getting ready to take a photo) above any printed or handwritten text (notebook, article, book, screen etc) until you see yellow “corners” appear. In this example I’m using my phone’s camera to look at this CNBC post: Apple’s latest iPhone update lets you copy and paste text from photos — here’s how on my computer screen… which is a little meta.

Next step (after the corners appear) is to touch the icon in the lower right screen (the one with four corners and three lines), which starts the process of choosing your text.

You can use “copy all” or highlight the text you want to save.

You can do this “live” (like in my example) or from a photo you’ve taken and saved.

You’ve copied it to a clipboard on your phone. Open Notes, Google drive, Word… whatever you use on your phone and paste!

p.s. Unfortunately this only works on an iPhone (sorry Android users)