# Copy Text in Photo Files on iPhone and Android Phones

- Author: Schema Law (https://www.schemalaw.com/)
- Published: 2022-09-13T18:55:26Z
- Updated: 2026-10-11T19:22:20Z
- Category: Phone scans and photos
- Canonical: https://www.schemalaw.com/blog/copy-text-in-photo

> How to copy text in a photo on your phone: Live Text on iPhone, Google Lens in Google Photos, Samsung Gallery, and when a pasted passage is not enough.

To copy text in a photo on your phone, open the picture and select the words in it. On an iPhone, touch and hold a word in the Photos app and tap Copy. In Google Photos, open Google Lens on the picture and select the words. In Samsung's Gallery, tap the T icon. Then paste.

All three are built in, and none asks you to send the picture to a separate converter. What you get is a passage on the clipboard. The sections here give each maker's documented steps, then the point at which a passage stops being enough.

## Can a phone copy text in a photo without another app?

Yes. Apple, Google and Samsung each document a feature that recognizes the words in a saved picture and lets you select and copy them. On an iPhone it is Live Text in Photos. In Google Photos it is Google Lens. On a Galaxy it is a text button in the Gallery app.

| Phone or app | Feature | Where the maker says to tap | What you can do with the words |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| iPhone or iPad, Photos app | Live Text | Touch and hold a word, or tap the Live Text button | Copy, Select All, Translate, Look Up |
| Google Photos on Android | Google Lens | More, then Google Lens, at the top of the photo | Tap and select words to copy |
| Samsung Galaxy, Gallery app | Text extraction | The yellow T icon at the bottom right | Copy all or part of the text |

If you came here asking how to copy text from an image for free, these are the answer for a short passage: the features come with the phone or with an app from the phone's own platform. Whether the phone you are holding has the feature depends on its model and software, and Apple and Samsung each publish which devices qualify.

### What "copy" gives you

Each route ends the same way: characters on the clipboard. You paste them into a note, an email or a document. Nothing new is saved. The photo stays a photo, and it will not become searchable in a file manager or in another program because you copied from it once.

That makes these features quick and also easy to overrate. Before you paste a passage into anything that matters, read it against the picture, especially figures, dates and names.

Do that check twice when the picture is a client's pleading or medical bill. Keep the photograph in the matter folder. The pasted line is handy for a draft, and the image can serve as documentary evidence you compare it with. A dated file name leaves authentication and the chain of custody a source to find.

### Pictures that are not in the photo library

Apple's wording covers "photos, videos, and images you find online", so a picture on a web page counts on an iPhone. A picture inside a PDF, an email attachment or a chat thread is another matter, and what works depends on the app showing it. The dependable move is to save the image to the photo library first, then copy from it there. For a page you are looking at through the camera and have not photographed, see the post on a [word scanner that reads print with the camera](https://www.schemalaw.com/blog/word-scanner-image-to-text).

## Copying text from a picture with Live Text on iPhone

On an iPhone you open the picture in Photos, touch and hold a word, move the grab points to cover the passage, and tap Copy. To take everything, tap Select All. Apple's support article sets out the steps and the requirements.

The article is [Copy and translate text from photos on your iPhone or iPad](https://support.apple.com/en-us/120004). Its steps:

1. Open the Photos app and select a photo or video, or select an image online.
2. Touch and hold a word and move the grab points to adjust the selection. If the text is in a video, pause the video first.
3. Tap Copy. To select all of the text in the photo, tap Select All.

Apple adds a shortcut for seeing what was recognized: select the photo, "then tap the Live Text button in the lower-right corner of the photo" to highlight all the text in it. Use that before you copy. If a line of the page is not highlighted, it was not recognized, and Select All will silently leave it out.

### If touching a word does nothing

Apple's article says Live Text is turned on under Settings, General, Language & Region. Check that switch first. Then check the model and the language against Apple's requirements. A picture that is small, dim or at an angle may also give the feature too little to work with; open the photo and zoom in to see whether you can read the words comfortably yourself.

### What else the Live Text button offers

The same article describes actions beyond copying:

- **Call or email.** Tap a phone number or email address the feature has recognized. Apple says you might also see options to make a FaceTime call or add to Contacts.
- **Translate.** Tap the Live Text button, then Translate.
- **Look Up.** Select one word for a dictionary entry, or several words for suggested websites.

For a law office the call and email actions are the useful ones: a phone number on a photographed business card or letterhead, dialed without retyping.

### A worked example

A client, Mr. Adeyemi, texts a photo of the top half of a utility shutoff notice. You need the account number and the cutoff date for a letter. Save the photo to Photos, open it, and tap the Live Text button to see what is highlighted. Touch and hold the account number, widen the selection to the whole line, tap Copy, and paste it into the draft. Then hold the phone beside the draft and read the number digit by digit. Do the same for the date. Two short pastes, each checked, is a sound use of the feature. Copying the entire notice with Select All and pasting it into the letter unread is not.

## Copying text from a picture with Google Lens in Google Photos

In Google Photos on Android you open the photo, tap More and then Google Lens at the top, and tap the words you want. Google's help page puts the copying step in one line: "To copy text, tap and select the words you'd like to copy."

The page is [Get info about your photos & surroundings](https://support.google.com/photos/answer/7539151?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid). Its steps:

1. On your Android phone or tablet, open the Google Photos app.
2. Select a photo.
3. At the top, tap More, then Google Lens.
4. Based on the photo, check the details or take an action.

Lens is a general image tool, and Google's list of what it does with a photo runs from barcodes to landmarks. Two entries on that list bear on documents. For a business card, Google says you can "save the phone number or address to a contact". For an event flyer, you can add the event to your calendar.

### Before you use Lens on a client's document

Google's page has a section on finding and deleting your Lens activity, and says that if you do not want that activity saved to your Google Account you can turn off Web & App Activity. It also says a setting called Include Visual Search History controls whether the images you search with are saved, and that this setting "is off by default".

Read that section and check your own account's settings before you run Lens on a privileged letter. The post on Google Lens has a section on [what Google says happens to an image you search with Lens](https://www.schemalaw.com/blog/google-lens-copy-text#what-does-google-say-happens-to-an-image-you-search-with-lens), with the relevant passages quoted.

### If there is no Lens button

Google's page says Lens can be used from Google Photos, from "Google Assistant on most Android phones" and from "the Google app on some Android phones, like Pixel". If the Photos app on your phone shows no Lens option on an open photo, update Google Photos from the Play Store and look again, or open Lens from the Google app and pick the photo from there.

### Lens on an iPhone

Google publishes an iPhone and iPad version of the same help page. If you use Google Photos on an iPhone, follow that version, since the buttons differ. On an iPhone you also have Live Text in Apple's own Photos app, which needs no Google account.

## Extracting text from a Gallery photo on a Samsung Galaxy

On a Galaxy phone you open the photo in the Gallery app and tap the yellow T icon at the bottom right. Samsung's support page says the text in the photo is then highlighted, and you can copy all or part of it and paste it elsewhere.

The page is Samsung's [How to extract text from a photo](https://www.samsung.com/ae/support/mobile-devices/how-to-extract-text-from-a-photo/). The steps it gives:

1. Open the Gallery app.
2. Select the photo containing the text.
3. Tap the yellow T icon in the bottom right corner of the screen.
4. Copy all or part of the highlighted text and paste it into another app or document.

### Which Galaxy phones

Samsung's page says the feature is available on "most modern Samsung Galaxy devices, including the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S25, Galaxy S26, Galaxy Z Fold, Galaxy Z Flip, and Galaxy A series", and advises running the latest software version. It gives no fuller list and no minimum software version. If no T icon appears on a photo that plainly contains print, check for a software update, and use Google Lens in Google Photos if the icon still does not show.

### Samsung's own cautions

The page is frank about where the feature struggles. It says:

- low-resolution photos "may result in incomplete or inaccurate text extraction",
- text in unusual fonts or languages "might not be recognized properly", and
- for complex layouts you should select specific text areas by hand.

It also suggests adjusting a photo's brightness or contrast if the text is not recognized. If you do that, edit a copy. The picture as the client sent it is the one that belongs in the file.

### Where the photo came from matters

A scan made with the Galaxy camera's Scan button is saved to Gallery, so you can try the T icon on your own scans as well as on photos people send you. That gives a Galaxy owner a way to scan a photo and copy text from it without leaving Samsung's apps: capture, open in Gallery, tap T, copy. The post on [how to scan a document on Android](https://www.schemalaw.com/blog/how-to-scan-a-document-on-android) covers the capture half.

## Which iPhones, iPads and languages does Live Text support?

Apple says Live Text needs an iPhone XS, iPhone XR or later running iOS 15 or later. It lists the supported iPad models separately, with iPadOS 15.1 or later. Languages are listed on Apple's feature availability page and do not cover every language a client's document may be in.

### Models

From Apple's support article on [copying and translating text from photos](https://support.apple.com/en-us/120004):

| Device | Apple's stated requirement |
| --- | --- |
| iPhone | iPhone XS, iPhone XR, or later, with iOS 15 or later |
| iPad Pro | iPad Pro (M4) models, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation) or later, iPad Pro 11-inch (all models) |
| iPad Air | iPad Air (M2) models, iPad Air (3rd generation) or later |
| iPad | iPad (8th generation) or later |
| iPad mini | iPad mini (5th generation) or later |
| Text in video | iOS 16 or later, or iPadOS 16 or later |

The iPad rows all require iPadOS 15.1 or later. To see what you have, open Settings, General, About, and read the model name and software version.

### Languages

Apple's [iOS and iPadOS feature availability page](https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#live-text-live-text) has a Live Text entry. When this post was written it listed Cantonese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese, several of them in more than one regional variety. Apple changes that page, so read it and do not rely on this paragraph.

Two consequences for a file with foreign-language papers:

- **A language off the list.** If a client's birth certificate is in a language Apple does not list, do not expect Live Text to read it, and do not trust what it returns if it returns something.
- **The switch.** Apple's article describes turning on Live Text "for all supported languages" under Settings, General, Language & Region. Confirm it is on.

Apple's pages do not say how Live Text handles handwriting, a page that mixes two languages, or unusual typefaces. Try it on the document in front of you and compare.

## When is copying a passage on the phone not enough for legal work?

Copying on the phone stops being enough when you need the whole document, a table that stays a table, or a record that ties the text to its page. Those are three different limits, and a matter file runs into each of them.

### Whole documents

Select All on one photo gives you one page of text with no page number. Twelve photos give you twelve pastes that you assemble by hand, in an order nothing in the text confirms. Headers, footers and page numbers arrive mixed into the body. For a lease, a medical record or a set of interrogatory answers, convert the document as a document: combine the photos into one PDF in page order and run it through OCR. The post on how to [scan Word from a photo](https://www.schemalaw.com/blog/scan-word-from-photo) follows a phone picture through to a Word file.

### Tables

A pasted table is a run of words and numbers. The columns are gone, and a figure can no longer be traced to its row. A bank statement, a fee schedule or a payment history needs output that keeps cells as cells.

### A record of the text

Clipboard text has no source attached. Three weeks later nobody can tell which photo it came from, whether it was corrected, or by whom. A converted file sits beside the image it came from, and the two can be compared at any time.

### A dividing line by task

| Task | Copy on the phone | Convert the whole document |
| --- | --- | --- |
| A phone number, address or case number | Yes | No need |
| One paragraph to quote in an email, checked against the photo | Yes | No need |
| A clause to quote in a filing | Only with a careful proofread | Safer |
| A multi-page agreement to search or edit | No | Yes |
| A statement or schedule with columns | No | Yes |
| Anything you must be able to trace back to a page | No | Yes |

When you are at a computer and the image is already there, you do not need the phone at all. The post on scanned images covers [copying one passage out of an image instead of the whole page](https://www.schemalaw.com/blog/scanned-image-to-text#copying-one-passage-out-of-an-image-instead-of-the-whole-page) on a desktop.

For the right-hand column, Schema Law takes a PDF, PNG or JPEG up to 20 MB, reads the pages into text and tables, and exports them in the [formats listed on the homepage](https://www.schemalaw.com/#formats), which include Word, Excel and searchable PDF. A photo saved in another format has to be converted first; the post on [HEIC to JPG](https://www.schemalaw.com/blog/heic-to-jpg) covers the iPhone case. Recognition is strongest on clean print, and nothing marks a passage as uncertain, so the proofreading habit from the phone carries over: names, dates and amounts, read against the picture.

## Try it on a real document

Upload a scanned PDF and export it as Word, a searchable PDF or plain text on the free plan. Your documents are never used to train an AI model. [Start free](https://www.schemalaw.com/api/auth/google)