How to turn handwriting to text with Google Lens

How to copy handwriting with Google Lens

1. Open Lens. Use the Google app or the camera icon in the Google search bar on your phone, or open a photo of the page in Google Photos and tap Lens.
2. Point the camera at the handwriting. Hold the phone straight above the page so all the lines you want are in view.
3. Tap Text. Lens marks the words it found on the page.
4. Select the lines. Drag over the words you want, or choose Select all.
5. Copy or send. Tap Copy to paste in another app on your phone, or copy to computer to paste on a signed-in computer with Chrome[1].

Google's own page says Lens copies text from signs, notes and more with your camera, and translates menus, signs and handwriting in over 100 languages[2]. When Google introduced copy to computer, it called the feature great for copying handwritten notes, if you write neatly, and said it needs the latest version of Chrome and both devices signed into the same Google account[1].

Where Google Lens stops

Lens copies the text you select into the clipboard. That works for a phone number, an address or a short list. A full page of notes is harder. You select across the page, paste the text somewhere and then fix the paragraphs and the order of a list by hand.

Nothing is saved as a document either. When you want to keep the page, send it to someone or search it later, you paste the copied text into a file yourself, line breaks and all.

Turn a whole handwritten page into text

The free tool at the top of this page reads a photo of the whole page at once. It returns every line in the order you wrote it, and you copy it, download a .txt file or download a Word document. Headings, bullet points and numbered lists come back as lists in Word, and a table drawn by hand comes back as a table.

What you upload

A JPG, PNG, WEBP or HEIC photo, or a one page PDF, up to 5 MB

What it reads

Print, block capitals and joined up cursive in the Latin alphabet

What you get

Typed text to copy, a .txt file or a Word file

Free use

1 page a day with no account, 10 a day with a free account

Google Lens and LoreAI for handwriting

Handwriting in another language

Lens shows a translation on top of the camera picture, which helps you read a note on the spot. When you need the translated page as a file, upload the photo to the LoreAI app and choose OCR + Translate. It detects the language by itself and returns an editable Word file in one of 105 languages. Your first document is free, up to 3 pages and 3 MB. The handwriting translator page covers letters and notes in more detail.

Tips for a clean photo of handwriting

• Lay the page flat and photograph it straight from above, with all four corners in the frame.
• Use daylight or an even lamp, with no shadow from your phone across the page.
• Photograph pencil notes in good light, because pencil is fainter than ink.
• Take one photo per page of a notebook, and turn the photo upright before you upload it.

Questions people ask