Ask NewTwos
Reading text in your photos
NewTwos reads the text inside your photos so search can find it later.
Why you'd care
This is what turns photographing something into filing it. A receipt, a whiteboard, a book page or a wine label becomes findable by its words rather than by remembering you took a picture.
Without it, a photo is a dead end unless you type a description.
The 60-second version
It happens automatically on new photos. Search for a word that appears in an image and the thing comes back. See search.
Older photos
Photos added before you turned this on are not indexed until they are scanned. Settings Smart Features Scan my existing photos runs that backfill.
Worth doing once if you have a long history, since it makes years of photos searchable in one pass.
Opting out
Settings Smart Features Search text in photos turns text reading off. With it off, existing extracted text can be purged rather than simply left in place.
Settings that change this
- Settings Smart Features Search text in photos turns text reading on and off.
- Settings Smart Features Scan my existing photos scans photos added before it was enabled.
- Settings Smart Features AI features is the master switch.
Tips
- Photograph the page rather than typing a quote. The text is searchable either way and the photo takes a second.
- Run the backfill once after importing an old photo library.
If it's not working
Search cannot find text I can clearly read. Either reading is off, or the photo predates it and the backfill has not run.
Handwriting is not found. Recognition is far better on printed text than on handwriting, and messy handwriting frequently will not be read at all.