How to Use Live Text on iPhone: Complete Guide to Apple’s Text Feature

Your iPhone can do more than simply take pictures of text. With Live Text, you can point your camera at a sign, flyer, poster, document, website, or almost anything containing readable text and interact with it instantly.

Live Text is available on iPhones starting with the iPhone XS and later models running iOS 15 or newer. Once your iPhone detects text through the camera, you can copy it, share it, translate it, look up information, or use quick actions such as calling a phone number or opening a website.

The feature is somewhat similar to Apple’s Visual Intelligence, but there’s an important difference: Live Text doesn’t require an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence. It also focuses specifically on recognizing and interacting with text.

Using it is straightforward. Point your iPhone at the text, tap the Live Text button when it appears, and then choose what you want to do.

What Can You Do With Live Text?

Live Text can be useful in everyday situations, not just when you’re traveling. For example, you can use it to:

• Capture details about an event from a poster or flyer.
• Copy information from a handwritten or printed note and send it to someone.
• Open a website without manually typing its address.
• Start an email directly from an address displayed on a sign.
• Call a phone number shown in your camera view.
• Translate text written in another language.
• Convert currencies and perform other quick actions.
• Copy text into apps such as Notes, Messages, or Mail.

For travelers, it can be particularly handy when dealing with menus, signs, directions, or information written in another language.

How to Use Live Text on Your iPhone

Using Live Text takes only a few steps.

Open the Camera app and point your iPhone at the text you want to capture. Keep the text within the viewfinder for a moment. When the iPhone recognizes it, a yellow frame will appear around the detected text.

Tap the small Live Text icon in the bottom-right corner. From there, you’ll see several options, including Copy and Translate.

You can select specific words or sentences using the grab points, which is useful when you only need part of the detected text, such as a website address or phone number. If you want everything, tap Select All.

Once you’ve selected the text, there are several ways to use it.

Copy and Share Text

The simplest option is to tap Copy and paste the text into another app. You can use it in Messages, Notes, Mail, or practically any other app that accepts text.

The Share option can be even more convenient when you want to send the information immediately. Depending on your iPhone and the content you’ve selected, you can share it through available services such as AirDrop.

Look Up Information

Live Text can also help you find more information about something you’ve captured. Select the relevant text and choose Look Up to search for an address, term, website, or other information.

If the text contains a web address, your iPhone can also recognize it as a link, allowing you to open the website without typing the URL manually.

Translate Text

Seeing a sign or document in another language? Live Text can recognize the words and give you the option to Translate them.

This can be especially useful while traveling, since you can point your camera at menus, signs, instructions, or other printed information instead of manually entering the text into a translation app.

Use Quick Actions

Depending on what your iPhone recognizes, Live Text may display a quick action at the bottom of the screen.

For example, a detected phone number can provide an option to call it, while an email address can open a new message. A website address can take you directly to the relevant webpage. Other recognized information may offer actions such as currency conversion.

These contextual actions make Live Text more useful than simply copying words from an image.

How to Turn Off Live Text

If you don’t want your iPhone to automatically detect text through the Camera app, you can disable the feature.

Go to:

Settings > Camera > Show Detected Text

Turn Show Detected Text off.

You can turn the setting back on whenever you want to use Live Text again.

Live Text vs. Visual Intelligence: What’s the Difference?

Live Text and Visual Intelligence both let your iPhone understand what the camera sees, but they are designed for different purposes.

Apple introduced Visual Intelligence with iOS 18.1 as part of Apple Intelligence in September 2024. Unlike Live Text, Visual Intelligence isn’t limited to words and characters. It can analyze objects, places, businesses, plants, landmarks, and other things in the camera’s view.

Visual Intelligence also requires an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence, such as the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or newer compatible models.

How to Activate Visual Intelligence

There are several ways to access Visual Intelligence, depending on your iPhone model and settings.

First, make sure Siri is enabled under:

Settings > Siri

If your iPhone has a Camera Control button, you can activate Visual Intelligence by pressing and holding it.

You can also configure the Action Button to launch Visual Intelligence by going to:

Settings > Action Button > Visual Intelligence

Another option is to select Siri from the Camera app if Siri’s AI features are enabled.

Visual Intelligence can also be added to the Lock Screen or Control Center. To add it to Control Center, swipe down from the top-right corner, press and hold an empty area, select Add a Control, and choose Visual Intelligence.

What Can Visual Intelligence Do?

Once Visual Intelligence is active, point your iPhone at an object, location, or other subject you want to understand.

For example, you could point the camera at a plant or landmark and use the available tools to get more information. Visual Intelligence can work with Siri, perform a Google Image Search, or use ChatGPT to provide additional information.

It can also recognize businesses. Point your camera at a business sign, for example, and you may be able to find details such as operating hours, menus, reviews, or available reservation information.

Visual Intelligence can work with text, too. Just like Live Text, it can recognize words and provide options to translate, read aloud, or summarize them. It can also recognize phone numbers, email addresses, and websites and allow you to interact with them directly.

Live Text or Visual Intelligence?

The main difference comes down to how much information you want your iPhone to understand.

Live Text is focused on recognizing and interacting with text. It works automatically when your iPhone detects text through the Camera app and is available on a much wider range of iPhone models.

Visual Intelligence provides a broader camera-based experience. It can analyze text, objects, landmarks, plants, businesses, and other subjects and then provide additional information using Apple’s AI-powered tools and services.

For simple tasks such as copying a phone number, translating a sign, or grabbing a website address, Live Text is usually all you need. When you want your iPhone to identify or explain something in the world around you, Visual Intelligence offers a broader set of capabilities.