Comments on: [Android] Best free OCR (image-to-text) app

By: blab

blab — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 18:07:32 +0000

How can I copy the scanned Text to clipbord? I only get bullshit google search rsults

By: Chintan Pandya

Chintan Pandya — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:40:47 +0000

@foolofgrace: goo.gl/SL8yY. We have done apt clean up of the junk given by OCR. Check out at goo.gl/SL8yY

By: Chintan Pandya

Chintan Pandya — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:38:34 +0000

We have uploaded one OCR based dictionary app. Which works for most cases like reading books, news papers etc. Also, in 2-3 days, we are going to upload a new version which also takes screenshot of any screen (say adobe reader) and performs OCR and gives the dictionary meaning of around 50 words at a time. You can check here: goo.gl/SL8yY

By: Andre Nahr

Andre Nahr — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:42:03 +0000

Thx for App

By: donavon

donavon — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 19:26:38 +0000

@Billking: How do you get past the first color note pad screen on CoolNotes...???

By: Billking

Billking — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 12:22:07 +0000

Try this android app: CoolNotes with OCR. It is free and not bad, very easy to extract text from image (Camera or Gallery) into a note.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xwinstudio.coolnotes

By: Deepak

Deepak — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:29:18 +0000

@foolofgrace: Hello , friend we are searching for cursive handwritting ocr will you help me to seach

By: samantha

samantha — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 18:55:14 +0000

I needed a good quality OCR app, tried mobile OCR its not that great so ended up paying for Scanthing at $3 and frankly totally worth it. I believe they do the OCR on a server hence the results are good but you have to wait 5-15 seconds depending on your connection. With 3G and Wifi its very usable. Anyway make up your own mind by reading the reviews to see if its worth it – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scanthing.android

By: LD

LD — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:15:43 +0000

@Ashraf: It could be useful when reading. Take an image of a word with cell phone, convert to text, copy to thefreedictionary app, and either get definition or translate. If it works well, it could be quite useful, especially to students. It would be nice if it was even more integrated with the dictionary, so that students would be less inclined to just skip over words.

By: Patrick Denker

Patrick Denker — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:21:17 +0000

I got outstanding (near-100%-accuracy) results with an app called “Mobile OCR Free” on the Android Market. A $5 paid version removes the splash nag screen. It requires a network connection; it uploads the pic of text that you snap for processing online (I don’t know using what server). You can OCR from an existing pic or snap a new one with the system camera; there’s no built-in camera in the app. Thus no de-skew, and the only way to crop is to edit the photo in the Android Gallery, which isn’t difficult. The app OCRs all text in the photo you select — and in my tests, staring from the same photo, it performed MUCH better than Google Docs’ OCR function did. This app recognized everything I tested with the same near-perfect accuracy and returned the result as a big text block with a “copy to clipboard” button.

My problem with Goggles was that, if it recognized the text as coming from a book, it would redirect you straight to that book’s page on Google Books — not OCR the whole image. And as noted above, Goggle’s OCR, when it didn’t redirect you to a search, was merely fair.

By: tealord

tealord — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:27:33 +0000

OCR on android would be good simply for things such a shopping receipts. Scanning, compiling price lists and being able to update some kind of stock levels.

I know that’s dull but it is pretty practical.

By: Col. Panek

Col. Panek — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 20:46:47 +0000

@foolofgrace: Right now my backed-up projects are translating a book for my dad that's in Dutch, with some old Flemish, French, and Latin; and translating a German book for my wife. I shoulda just told them it was impossible, but what I'm doing is using OmniPage Pro (ten year old version) to OCR them, then translating on-line with Google translate. Sure, you could just type in a page and that would be easier. But I have 300 pages to be translated.

By: Ashraf

Ashraf — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:29:27 +0000

@Jyo: Yeah, I hate the new design, too. And its slower than the previous market. And its depressing. At least pick better colors, Google.

By: Jyo

Jyo — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:25:54 +0000

*goes to phone, unlocks, touches market app* What the heck!!!!??? What is with this new market tile design??!?!

Okay fine, it’s not soo bad.

By: Ashraf

Ashraf — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 08:42:34 +0000

@leland: I'v never been a big user of Evernote so I wasn't aware that Evernote can perform OCR. That said, though, I went to go check out the Evernote app on Android and while the feature list does mention "Search for text inside images" I can't seem to figure out how to OCR with Evernote. o_O

By: leland

leland — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 08:33:26 +0000

Probably the oldest OCR app that is not really an OCR app but for notes is EverNote which also works on iPhone. Better yet there is a version for the PC and Mac. And the notes stay in sync though the cloud. The OCR function can even convert handwriting to text. Not many OCR programs are that good.

By: Ashraf

Ashraf — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 08:22:40 +0000

@foolofgrace: I mostly agree with you. In my opinion, OCR on a phone is not ideal. While I can't speak for why others may want it, for me personally just having OCR makes me feel fuzzy on the inside xD. So "because I can". Thanks for the feedback and kind words.

By: foolofgrace

foolofgrace — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 08:10:25 +0000

I love that this site gives me great info and reviews, but I don’t see the point of an OCR app for Android. I have many years’ experience with OCR for the desktop and even under the best circumstances, using professional-quality OCR apps, you have to do a fair amount of cleanup and verification. I shudder to think of the cleanup necessary for an Android app. I imagine there must be a need somewhere for this but I can’t think of what it could be. Even with a good desktop OCR app, sometimes it’s faster I(and less irritating) to just type the dang thing yourself, but then again I typed at 96 wpm last time I was “tested.” Anyway, thanks for all of your work, and keep ‘em coming!