Google Lens is one of the most useful apps on a smartphone, using the phone's camera for text recognition, object search and more. Now, one of Lens' best features is coming to another app. This leads us to say that Gboard will gain an incredible copy and paste function!
Gboard has an incredible copy and paste function! Have you seen?
According to 9to5Google, Google is introducing the “Scan Text” feature on Gboard. That said, this functionality is already present in the beta version of Gboard.
This is pretty much just a simplified version of Google Lens' optical character recognition (OCR) functionality. However, you can find it by tapping the tools menu in Gboard (the first icon on the left, above the keyboard) and selecting it or dragging it to the Gboard toolbar as a shortcut.
After activating the feature, Gboard will ask for permission to use the camera. The camera viewfinder will then occupy the lower half of your screen. From here, you can simply take a photo of the text, highlight the text you want to capture, and tap “insert” to add it to the current text field.
It's important to note that this text scanning feature does not offer other text-related Google Lens features, such as web searches or translation functionality. However, it remains an excellent way to copy-paste real-world text as the need arises. This without having to add it to the clipboard first.
This is undoubtedly a great new addition to the ability to completely customize the keyboard and even its behavior. It is for this reason that Gboard is without a doubt the best keyboard available for Android smartphones. Do you usually use it or do you prefer something else?