Handwritten to Text App Android: Gboard, Lens and Notes

On Android, a handwritten to text app comes in three forms. Gboard has a handwriting keyboard for writing into any app. Google Lens copies text from a photo of paper notes. Note apps such as Samsung Notes convert ink written with a stylus. Which one you need depends on whether the handwriting is on the screen or on paper.

Which Android app turns handwritten notes into text?

No single Android app covers every case. For writing on the screen and getting typed text, Google documents a handwriting layout in Gboard and Samsung documents a convert-to-text tool in Samsung Notes. For handwriting already on paper, Google has described Google Lens copying handwritten notes from the camera. Pick by where the handwriting is.

Each example in the third column is described here only from its maker's own pages. Those pages say what the feature does and how to switch it on. None of them gives a figure for how well it reads handwriting, and this post does not supply one.

When you paste text from a photographed client page, check the name, the date, any amount, and a signature. Save the photo in the matter with the paste, and rely on that pair as documentary evidence. Point at the photo for authentication. Add a chain of custody note if the image also sits in a personal gallery, and judge materiality with the photo beside the text.

Before you install anything, look at what the device already has. If Gboard is the keyboard on your phone, the handwriting layout is a setting away. If you carry a Samsung tablet with an S Pen, Samsung Notes is the first Android handwriting to text app to try. A third-party download makes sense only after those have been tried on your own writing and found short.

Gboard's handwriting keyboard: writing into any app, per Google's help page

Gboard's handwriting keyboard replaces the keys with a blank writing area. Google's help page Handwrite on your keyboard says: "You can handwrite words on your keyboard to enter text." It works in any app you can type in, and Google says you can write with "a finger or stylus."

Turning it on

Google's page gives the steps for an Android phone or tablet:

1. Open any app that you can type in. Google's examples are Gmail and Keep.
2. Tap where you can enter text, so the keyboard appears.
3. At the top of the keyboard, tap Settings.
4. Tap Languages, then the language you want to use.
5. Swipe right and turn on the Handwriting layout.
6. Tap Done.

Step 5 carries the main limit. Google's page says: "If you don’t find it, Handwriting is not available for your language." The page opens with the same warning, marked Important: "Handwriting is not available in all languages."

Switching to it while you work

Once the layout is on, Google's instructions are to touch and hold the Globe key and select a handwriting keyboard, for example English (US) Handwriting. The keyboard then becomes the blank area you write in.

Google adds one tip about spacing: "In most languages, Gboard predicts when you need a space. If it misses one, tap the Spacebar at the bottom of your screen."

What it suits in a law office

A handwriting keyboard enters text. It is the same job a keyboard does, done with a fingertip or pen. That makes it suitable for:

• a quick time note or task typed into your practice system from a phone
• a search term when you would sooner write than tap small keys
• a short message in a language whose keyboard layout you do not know well

It is a poor fit for a full page of meeting notes. The writing area is the size of a keyboard, the ink does not stay on the screen as a record, and what remains is only the typed text. If the keyboard misreads a name, there is no original to compare.

Google's help page does not say whether the writing is recognized on the phone or sent to a server. If that matters for what you plan to write, read Gboard's privacy information in the app's settings before you use it for client matters, and put the question to whoever approves software at your firm.

A two-minute trial

Open a blank note, switch to the handwriting keyboard and write: a client-style surname, a date, a sum of money, and the phrase "did not agree". Check each against what you intended. Repeat with the stylus if you have one. You will learn more from those four items than from any description.

Google Lens and handwritten paper: copying text from a photo

Google has said Lens can copy handwritten notes from paper. In a 2020 post on its own blog, New Google Lens features to help you be more productive at home, Google called a new copy feature "great for quickly copying handwritten notes (if you write neatly!)". The condition in brackets is Google's.

What the post describes

The post, dated May 7, 2020, says you could already use Lens "to quickly copy and paste text from paper notes and documents to your phone". It then announces that, after selecting text with Lens, you can tap "copy to computer" to paste it on another signed-in device with Chrome. Google states two requirements for that step: the latest version of Chrome, and both devices signed in to the same Google account.

Google's help page Get info about your photos & surroundings gives a route to Lens through Google Photos: open the app, select a photo, tap Google Lens. Its tip for text is short: "To copy text, tap and select the words you'd like to copy."

A blog post from 2020 describes the feature as it was announced. Menus move between versions, so if the button names on your phone differ, follow the app and not the post.

Using it on a handwritten page

If you are searching for a scan handwriting to text app on Android for a page or two, this is the simplest thing to try first.

1. Lay the page flat in even light and photograph the whole page square-on.
2. Open the photo in Lens and select the text.
3. Copy it and paste it into a blank document.
4. Put the photo and the pasted text side by side and read every line.

Step 4 is the work. Google's own phrase, "if you write neatly", tells you the result depends on the writer. Check in this order: lines that are missing altogether, then names, dates and amounts, then small words such as "no" and "not". How to photograph a page so that software has a fair chance is covered in the post on taking a photo that OCR can read.

Where Lens stops being the right tool

Lens gives you selected text. It does not give you a document that keeps each page image with its text, and it does not number pages. For a single address, a phone message slip or the back of a business card, that is fine. For a client's ten-page handwritten account of events, scan the pages, keep the scans, and convert them with software that returns a document you can file. The post on scan handwriting to text apps explains what camera apps of this kind do between the lens and the text, and where they fall short.

Photographing a client's page with a personal phone also puts the image in that phone's photo library and in any backup attached to it. Decide where the photo should live before you take it.

Is handwriting recognition on Android the same on every phone and tablet?

No, and the makers' own pages show why. Android handwriting features belong to individual apps, and each app has its own language list and its own settings. Google documents Gboard's layout as language-dependent. Samsung documents a separate handwriting language setting inside Samsung Notes and a handwriting mode in the Samsung keyboard.

Three things vary from device to device, and each is something you can check in a few minutes.

Which keyboard is installed

Gboard's handwriting layout exists only where Gboard is the keyboard in use. A phone may ship with its maker's keyboard instead. Samsung's support page on Samsung Notes handwriting functions says that in an app with an on-screen keyboard, such as Messages, "you can switch the Samsung keyboard to handwriting mode as well." So two Android devices on one desk can have two different handwriting keyboards. Open any text field and look at which keyboard appears.

Which languages are covered

Google's page ties the Handwriting layout to the language you select, and says it is missing for some. Samsung's page says you can write in a language other than English and convert it "as long as the language is supported", and gives the path: Menu, Settings, Handwriting language. The two lists are separate. A language present in one may be absent from the other.

Whether there is a pen

Google says Gboard takes a finger or a stylus. Samsung's page is written around the S Pen, though it says you can use your finger to draw or write in the app. A finger on a phone screen and a pen on a tablet produce very different handwriting from the same person, so test with the tool you will really use.

A device check for a firm

If the firm issues or permits several Android devices, record these for each model before anyone relies on handwriting input:

• the default keyboard and whether it has a handwriting mode
• whether a stylus is supplied, and which one
• the handwriting languages offered in the keyboard and in the note app
• the result of a four-item trial (surname, date, amount, a negative) by the person who will use it

Recognition quality is a property of the app, the language and the writer together. Do not assume a colleague's good experience on a different model carries over to yours.

Samsung, Google and third-party note apps on an Android tablet

On an Android tablet, a note app keeps your ink on the page and converts it when you ask. Samsung documents this for Samsung Notes. For any other note app, including Google's and third-party ones, read the vendor's own help pages for a convert-to-text feature before assuming it has one.

Samsung Notes, in outline

Samsung's support page describes conversion in four steps: create a note and write with the S Pen, tap the Clean up handwriting icon at the bottom of the screen, tap the Convert to text icon, then drag the arrows to select your writing and tap Convert. It adds: "You can also tap Copy to copy the text if you need to paste it elsewhere."

The same page separates two things that are easy to confuse. Align handwriting straightens wobbly writing and leaves it as ink. Convert to text replaces it with type. Samsung also notes an error you may meet: if the handwriting is not legible, the app reports "No text to recognize".

That is a summary. The post on Samsung Notes handwriting to text goes through the tools, the language setting and export in full.

Google's and third-party note apps

The Google help page opened for this post covers the Gboard keyboard. It names Keep only as an example of an app you can type in. It says nothing about converting handwriting drawn inside a note. If you use a Google note app with a stylus, look in that app's help for conversion and test it; do not infer it from the keyboard page.

For a third-party note app on Android, start with one question the platform adds: does the vendor's documentation say the Android version converts handwriting to text? A feature documented for one platform may not be documented for another. Then put the app through the seven checks for a handwriting app, which cover whether the ink is kept, the languages listed, storage and export.

Note app or keyboard?

Use a note app when the page itself matters: you want the ink, the layout, a sketch of an intersection beside the words. Use the handwriting keyboard when only the words matter and they belong in another app. For choosing hardware, the post on tablet handwriting to text apps compares tablets and styluses as a class.

Where does text copied from a handwritten page go on Android?

Copied text goes first to the clipboard, and from there wherever you paste it. With the Lens feature Google described, it can also go to a computer through Chrome, when both devices are signed in to the same Google account. Text entered with Gboard goes straight into the app you were typing in.

Trace the path for the method you use, because each one leaves the words in a different place.

Questions the path raises

Which account is signed in? The Lens route to a computer depends on a shared Google account. On a personal phone that may be a personal account. If the text is from a client's document, a personal account is a place your firm's policy may not allow it to pass through. Check the policy, then check the account shown in the app.

What else reads the clipboard? The clipboard is a temporary holding place shared across apps. Paste the text where it belongs promptly, and copy something harmless afterwards if you do not want client text sitting there.

Where is the photo? Copying text out of a photo leaves the photo behind. It stays in the gallery, and in any backup the gallery uses, until someone deletes it.

Where is the original? Pasted text has no link back to the page it came from. Save the image or scan of the handwritten page to the matter file alongside the typed text, and note the date and who checked one against the other.

Filing what you copied

For a short handwritten page captured on an Android phone, the image and the pasted text both belong in the matter folder, with the text proofread against the image and nothing left behind in personal apps on the phone. The post on scan handwriting to text apps sets out a routine for getting recognized handwriting out of an app and into the matter file.

When the pages are many, or the text will be relied on in a filing, move off the phone. A service such as Schema Law takes PDF, PNG or JPEG uploads in the browser, shows you the parsed pages and exports them, and its security commitments include deleting any document whenever you choose. Its homepage also says recognition is weaker on handwriting than on clean print and that nothing marks a passage as uncertain. The proofreading step does not go away with a better tool.