How to turn an image to text in Google Keep

How to grab image text in Google Keep

Start with an image note. On Android, open Keep, tap Create, then Image, and take a photo or choose one from your library[3]. On a computer, go to keep.google.com and click New note with image[3]. Then:

1. Open the note and tap the image so it fills the screen.
2. Open the More menu and choose Grab image text.
3. The text appears in the note under the image. Select it and copy it wherever you need it.

Photos you take inside Keep are not added to your phone's photo library[3], so the note is the only copy unless you save the image yourself.

Get the text from an image with the free tool on this page

1. Choose the image. A JPG, PNG, WEBP or HEIC photo, a screenshot, or a one-page PDF up to 5 MB.
2. Press Get the text. The whole page is read with OCR and shown in a few seconds, with no account.
3. Copy or download. Copy the text, or download a .txt file or a Word document with the tables kept as tables.

This is the quicker route when the image already sits on your computer or you want a file, not a note.

What does Keep do with the text?

Google describes the feature as a way to grab the text from an image so you can find the note again through search[1]. On Android you can search for words in photos, like a receipt, by typing them into Keep's search bar, in English only[2].

The grabbed text lands in the note as plain text. That is right for a receipt total, a Wi-Fi password or a quote from a book. A form, a table or a page with headings comes out as lines of text, and you rebuild the layout by hand.

Can Google Keep turn handwriting into text?

Keep's help pages do not say how it treats handwriting in a photo, and drawings you make inside Keep are a separate note type[3]. For a page of handwritten notes, a letter or a recipe card, LoreAI reads cursive and printed handwriting and returns it as text you can edit. The handwriting to text guide covers whole notebooks, and Google Lens and handwriting covers Google's camera route.

Other Google tools that pull text out of a photo

For the Drive route step by step, see Google Drive OCR.

From a stack of notes to one Word file

Keep works one image at a time, and each result stays in its own note. When you have a pile of pages, such as a week of lecture notes or a long letter, upload them to the LoreAI app as a PDF or as photos. It reads every page with OCR and returns one Word file in the original order, with handwriting, stamps and tables included.

You can also translate the pages into one of 105 languages in the same step. Your first document is free, up to 3 pages and 3 MB. For single photos, the guide to copying text from an image covers every phone and computer.

Questions people ask