Windows 11

Windows 11’s Phone Link app gets more useful with the new text extraction feature, but it’s not available for everyone yet.

Key Takeaways

Windows 11’s Phone Link app now includes OCR for text extraction from Android photos.
Phone Link can grab text from any Android photo, unlike the Google Photos website method.
The new text detection tool is currently being tested with Windows Insiders and is not available to all users yet.

Microsoft started testing a bunch of AI features for some of the stock apps in Windows 11 last year, including OCR (optical character recognition) for the Camera and Snipping Tool apps. Back then, there was no indication that the same benefit would be extended to other stock apps. But Microsoft has been quietly working all these months to expand the OCR capability to the Phone Link app. And now, the effort has finally paid off.

Windows 11’s Phone Link app can now detect and extract text from photos on your Android device

Screenshot showing text detection and extraction feature in the Phone Link app

You don’t have to buy one of the best Android phones to be able to extract text from photos, because OCR has long been available in the Google Photos app for every Android user. It also works on the Google Photos website. The Phone Link app on Windows 11 now does the same thing, allowing you to extract all the useful pieces of text from photos you captured from your Android phone and copy them directly to your PC.

If you’re unsure about which method is best for you, there is one major advantage of using the Phone Link over the Google Photos website for text detection on your Android photos. The former will grab text from all the photos you capture from your Android phone, while the website method will work only when the photos taken from the phone are saved to the Google Photos app.

Phone Link’s new text detection and extraction tool isn’t available for all

Screenshot showing what's new in Phone Link app

If you’re running Windows 11 stable, the latest version of the Phone Link app available for you is 1.24042.107.0, which isn’t the one to look for the feature. That’s because Microsoft is currently testing it with Windows Insiders. Although the company made no official announcement, we spotted it in Phone Link version 1.24051.91.0 running on Windows 11 Insider Dev Channel build 26120.670. The Verge has confirmed that it’s also available on Beta Channel Insider Preview build 22635.3646.

If you’re a Windows Insider, you need to update the Phone Link app to the latest version. Also, remember that it is still in the testing phase, so it might not work as intended every time. Unfortunately, there is no clarity on how many days Microsoft will take to iron out issues and make the feature available for all Windows 11 users.