Hacker News Reader

Comment by magnio | Hacker News Reader

On Android, long press home button activates Google Assistant that can OCR the current screen and translate immediately. Unironically one of the only two features keeping me on Android until now.

View on HN

On iOS 26 you can do basically the same thing. Take a screenshot (power button + volume up), click the thumbnail of the screenshot that appears. You'll see the screenshot full screen and there is a 'translate' button (along some other AI stuff).

macOS does this, too, along with other text manipulation features in screenshots and arbitrary image and video files opened in Preview, QuickTime Player (and apps using an embedded player), and Safari. High quality, local, system-provided OCR is a godsend sometimes.

Unless the App Developer has chosen to blanket deny screenshots. This is common on view accepting payment information but blanket application is also common.

Like with all things Google, this feature wasn't available in Gemini (or only available on some devices) last I checked. With Gemini going to replace Google Assistant in the future, this is yet another useful feature that Google will be taking away from Android.

If you open an image with Google Lens (or select the image in the Google Search app, which seems to result in the same thing) Google does by default an image web search and shows you similar pictures, but it also displays a blue "translate" button on the right, which activates OCR and text selection, and optional translation. Though it doesn't seem possible to avoid it doing the image web search first, which might be problematic for private pictures.

That's a very different flow with a much higher friction compared to simply long pressing the home button in any app.

Yeah. (What would be the equivalent to long pressing the home button when Android gestures are used, and there is no home button?)

Holding down the handle (white line) that you would otherwise pull up to enter the app switcher

Apparently this is disabled for me, or I disabled it in the past.

I use it for translation all the time on my Pixel 7a with Gemini

Nah man, trigger the "circle to search" feature (on my phone I use gestures and I hold down on the bottom center of the screen) and you can draw a line over ANY text to highlight it instantly, even text within an image. Perhaps the best feature I've ever been given during an update.

Circle to Search is not available for all devices. My Fairphone 4 doesn't have it and there are plenty of other devices where it's not allowed by Google yet.

Interesting. I screenshot then send to Google Lens which is obviously more of a hassle than what you're describing. But I have gestures enabled and so no home button. I wonder what is the gesture-equivalent of long-pressing on home.

Press and hold bottom line - I use it regularly

On my Pixel 5, if you swipe from the bottom bar up (as if you are gesturing to close the app), near the bottom some options will appear: Screenshot or Select. The Select mode is an OCR enabled text selection.

This just takes me to the horizontal scrolling list of apps displayed as screenshots of the app. I can swipe from the bottom corner to bring up "Gemini" but that doesn't have an option to OCR the screen. Android is so diverse - people always end up talking about their unique and differing experiences, unfortunately.

Yeah. I do have an unlocked Pixel with vanilla Android and the default app launcher.

> list of apps displayed as screenshots of the app

The text in those screenshots is selectable!

All text is selectable on the app switcher granted it uses OCR so YMMV

I had no idea that was a thing, neat!

yeah definitely my favourite feature on android too that I use multiple times per day. Unlike the people saying taking a screenshot is basically the same on iOS - no it isn't. This moves the whole display into an ephemeral screenshot and you can copy text, translate, all kinds of things, without the delay of taking a screenshot, or worrying about that file hanging around permanently after.

Super ironic that often images are the most accessible way to share text data these days but that's what enshittification brought us.

> activates Google Assistant that can OCR the current screen

> activates Google Assistant that can copy a bunch of your personal data for eternal storage with Alphabet, building your personal profile there - with your permission, instead of them having to find some kind of excuse to obtain it

There, I fixed that for you.

I prefer this easy solution: Print the website (with a printer), take a photo of the printed page, run the photo through OCR software. As simple as that.

I prefer this easy solution: Take a photograph of the website, develop the film, send it off to a transcription service, received the printed copy in the mail, take a digital picture of the document, run it through OCR software. As simple as that.

Need to make sure you take a picture of it on a wooden table. https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Web_0_0x2e_1

Reply on news.ycombinator.com