How to Extract Text from a Photo on iPhone

The information is right there in the photo — the Wi-Fi password on the café wall, the totals on a receipt, the paragraph in a book — but you cannot copy it, search it, or paste it. Optical character recognition (OCR) closes that gap by reading the text out of the pixels.

Extracting text with the converter

1. Open HEIC,JPEG,PDF Media Converter and select the photo. HEIC, JPG, PNG, and screenshots all work.
2. Choose Text as the output format.
3. Tap Convert. The recognized text appears on screen.
4. Copy All Text to paste anywhere, share it directly to chat or email, or Save to Files as a text file.

Recognition runs entirely on-device — relevant here more than anywhere, since the photos people OCR are often the sensitive ones: contracts, IDs, medical papers, receipts. Nothing is uploaded.

What OCR handles well, and what trips it

• Great: printed text — books, receipts, letters, screenshots, signs. Clear type on plain backgrounds is close to perfect.
• Decent: slightly angled shots, mild shadows, small print. Expect a stray character here and there.
• Hard: handwriting, heavily stylized fonts, text over busy backgrounds, blurry photos. You will get partial results.

Two habits improve accuracy more than anything else: shoot straight-on rather than at an angle, and fill the frame with the text you want. If a first pass comes out rough, retake the photo closer and flatter rather than fighting the output.

Where this beats retyping

Receipts into an expense note. A printed schedule into your calendar. Quotes from paper books into study notes. An error message on a colleague's screen into a searchable ticket. Anything longer than one line is faster through OCR than through your thumbs.

Text recognition is available 3 times per day on the free tier; Premium makes it unlimited.