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by bjoli 1144 days ago
I had my mind blown by the same functionality in Android. Being able to select text from an app in the app-switching context is amazing.

I will definitely use this.

3 comments

On Windows with the new PowerToys, win+shift+t does the same thing - works really well!

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-ext...

How do you do this on Android?
You can also do it with Google lens on any android, unless I'm misunderstanding the functionality
It's only for Pixel phones.
How do you do it on Pixel phones?
You need to use the Pixel Launcher, if you aren't already. It might also be restricted to English (United States) only as well.

If you're using gesture navigation, swipe up from the pill to about a quarter of the screen to pull up your recent apps list. If using 3-button navigation, press the square button. Then tap the Select button.

https://imgur.com/a/pJFVr4o

That doesn't use OCR.
There are two options for text selection.

Overview selection is Pixel-exclusive and that is definitely OCR since it can detect text in images. It's not perfect however, and it doesn't seem to support non-Latin script.

The other way is to use an app like Copy [1] which analyzes app layouts.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.weberdo.ap...

It can select text from images. It uses OCR.