A viral video shows iOS 15’s brilliant Live Text feature in action

Apple released iOS 15 about a month ago, so you’ve had plenty of time to check out the new design changes and features. That is, if you hadn’t already explored iOS 15 while it was in beta over the summer. Some of the changes are immediately clear. But you might miss out on other neat features if you haven’t been following Apple’s iOS developments closely. And there is a brilliant addition to iOS 15 you absolutely shouldn’t miss out on. It’s called Live Text, and it lets you interact with written text in images. And there’s a viral video on social media that does a great job of showing how useful the feature can be.

How Live Text works in iOS 15

Apple fans who are familiar with iOS 15 have been using Live Text for quite a while. The feature lets you interact with any text that the iPhone’s AI can recognize, whether it’s in photos or images online. What’s great about Live Text is that it lets you tap text to send an email or make a call. You can use it to translate text, and copy the text in other apps.

To try it out, just take a photo of something that contains written information and then start interacting with it. Mind you, you’ll have to have Live Text enabled on your iPhone or iPad by going to the Language & Region section of your device. Also, you’ll need to have an iPhone XR or later to use Live Text. Older handsets that support iOS 15 do not get Live Text support.

If you’re hearing about Live Text for the first time, you might want to check out this support document that explains how it all works and how to start using the feature. But it’s really the video below that will show you exactly why Live Text is so brilliant.

The viral video

A Twitter user shared the clip below on Twitter on Thursday, where it went viral. The video received more than 2.7 million views and over 85,000 likes on the platform. The Live Text video was first posted on TikTok in France.

As you can see in the video, a student running iOS 15 on the iPhone takes a photo of a colleague’s laptop screen. That person is taking notes during class on the notebook. The TikTok user then goes to the Photos app on the iPhone to select the text in the photo he just took and copy everything.

That’s Live Text on iOS 15 in action. That’s how you steal notes from your classmates with Live Text. And that’s how easy interacting with text in photos and images should be on iPhone and iPad. You need to make sure that the phone can capture a decent quality photo of the text you want to interact with. The student in the video zooms in on the laptop screen before pressing the shutter.