Soon, Windows Could Allow Extracting Texts from Images Stored on Smartphone

Soon, Windows may enable the extraction of text from images stored on smartphones.

Microsoft's Phone Link service on Windows is reportedly receiving a new feature that enables users to extract text from images stored on synced Android smartphones. According to a report from Windows Central, this feature utilizes optical character recognition (OCR) to identify text within an image and facilitates copying and pasting into other applications on the PC.

When an Android smartphone is linked to the Phone Link service on Windows via the Link to Windows app, users can synchronize calls, messages, notifications, and images with their PC. With this latest feature, the Phone Link service displays a new "Text" button when viewing an image from the smartphone on the PC. Clicking on this button automatically identifies the text within the image using OCR and offers options for selecting all text, copying all text, and more.

While text extraction using OCR is already a feature in Windows 11 through the Snipping Tool, it's a novelty for the Phone Link service. With this addition, users will now be able to extract text from images that aren't locally stored. This means they won't need to capture a screenshot and then extract the text; instead, they can do it directly within the viewing gallery.

According to the report, the new text extraction feature is currently accessible to a limited number of users in the "Release Preview" phase and is expected to become more widely available in the coming weeks. It's important to note that this feature only functions with Android smartphones synced using the Link to Windows app. While the Link to Windows app is also available on iPhones, it imposes restrictions on image syncing and only permits access to calls, messages, and notifications from Windows.