iPhone trick: How to copy and paste text and images from your photos

Safety is a selling point of Apple’s latest offering. The iPhone 14 has improved car crash detection and even emergency SOS via satellite. Tap or click here for instructions on sending an emergency text when you have no signal. It could save your life.

With the new iPhone came a new operating system. iOS 16 introduced new safety features and cool updates like the ability to unsend texts and lock screen switching.

The new OS enhanced two iPhone tools: Live Text and Visual Lookup. You can now do much more with the objects, people and texts found in your photos, videos and images from the web.

Use Live Text to copy, look up or translate text from photos and videos

Live Text was introduced with iOS 15, allowing you to capture the text in pictures and copy it as easily as text from a message, web page, note or document. This tool also lets you look up text on the web or translate it right then and there.

Live Text got some enhancements with iOS 16, so you’ll need to update to get the best use out of it. You’ll also need an iPhone XR/XS or newer to use Live Text.

You can use Live Text from an existing photo, the Camera app or the web.

Use Live Text from your camera roll:

  • Open the Photos app and select an image containing text.
  • Tap and hold on any word and you’ll get a menu. Drag around all the words you want or tap Select All, then tap Copy.
    • You can also tap the text selection button on the lower right of your screen to highlight text before copying it.
  • Open another app and tap on the screen to Paste the text you just copied.
  • Tap Look Up to find the highlighted text on the web.
  • Tap Translate to translate the text.

Use Live Text from your camera:

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This genius iPhone trick will save you time texting

It is hard to imagine that the world record for typing the alphabet on a mobile phone is only 3.5 seconds. Taking that one step further, a Brazilian teen set a new Guinness World Record for fastest texter in 2014 when he typed a 25-word message in under 19 seconds.

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Use AI to prep for interviews: Open your favorite AI chatbot, then copy and paste the job description. Ask it to break down the key details and responsibilities. Next, have the chatbot act as your interviewer.

✂️ Paste without the mess: Use Ctrl + Shift + V on PC or Option + Cmd + Shift + V on Mac to paste text without the formatting.

🔠 I use it all the time: If you have an iPhone XS, XR or later, your phone can recognize text in photos, images and video. Just hold down on text in a pic you took or downloaded, and then you can paste that text wherever you want. The same goes for recent-model Androids.

Is it spam? Reader Ron S. in Gilbert, Arizona, dropped me a note with a reminder about a super-helpful site if you’re worried a link is suspicious. Google analyzes billions of URLs every day and adds spammy ones to a list. Paste a link in here to see if it’s been flagged. Thanks, Ron!

Quick sharing tip: Want to share a specific section of a webpage? In Google Chrome, highlight the text, right-click your selection and choose Copy link to highlight. Paste in that link, and it’ll send your recipient right to that spot.

YouTube trick: There might be a good reason you need a solid screenshot of a single frame of a YouTube video. Now, it’s easy to do. Pause the video, right-click on it and select Copy video frame. Sweet! Just paste it into a chat, image editor or document.

Copy and copy and copy and paste and paste and paste: Don’t get stuck with just one item on the Windows clipboard. Open Settings, then pick System > Clipboard to enable clipboard history. To get to the history, hit Windows key + V on your keyboard.