Google is introducing a new feature called Scan Text to Gboard for Android with the latest beta version of the app (version 13.9). It lets you capture an image and copy text from it directly from the keyboard. The feature uses an optical character recognition (OCR) tool to offer this functionality, which is also used by Google Lens and many other apps to recognize text from an image.
For your information, the Scan Text option appears in Gboard’s Features carousel. The first time you click on the Scan Text option, the app will ask you for permission to access your phone’s camera. Once you grant the necessary permissions, it will bring up a viewfinder in the same area as the keyboard.
After this, you can take a photo of the text you want to copy. After that, you need to highlight the text you want to copy, and Gboard will recognize that text and show it to you. If this is what you want to copy, simply tap the Insert button next to the text and the text will appear in the text input box.
This feature is also similar to Google Lens, which also lets you take an image and copy text from it. However, if you want to copy text from an image while you type, using Gboard’s Scan Text feature to do so will be more convenient and faster than using Google Lens.
At the moment, there is no information about when Google will bring this feature to the stable version of Gboard for Android or Gboard for iOS. Given that ScanText is fully functional, the company expects to make it available to the public in the next few weeks.
