Tech Desk 
May 28, 2024
A forthcoming variant of Microsoft Phone Link allows users to choose and copy text from within photos synced from their Android mobile.
The feature is available now in Release Preview Insider builds, it should be visible to everyone. Phone Link — known as Link to Windows on the phone side — allows users to sync calls, messages, notifications and photos. Moreover, it works in a restricted fashion with iOS gadgets, which only sync notifications, messages, and calls over Bluetooth.
The Windows Snipping tool got text origin last year at the same time Phone Link got photos share notifications, so it has been feasible to extract text from photos with the Snipping tool. This upgrade saves user’s steps and provides them to do it in-app.
Read more: Microsoft Copilot AI integrated into Microsoft Launcher for Android
The feature is available in Phone Link 1.24051.91.0 and the users gave it a quick test in Insider Preview Build 22635.3646.
In the testing, the OCR was upright. However, it made more errors than either Samsung or Apple’s text extractors with the same image of a book page.
For higher approaches the users likely off allowing cross-device copy and paste extracting the textual part on their mobile, and sending it to their PC.
