A few weeks ago, I posted on here asking if anyone would find a certain app idea I have useful. https://www.applevis.com/forum/ios-ipados/would-be-helpful
In particular, I was thought that people with low vision would find it useful.
Well, I got just enough response that I decided that it would be worth opening up a beta for it.
If you're interested in helping out and having a look, I'd appreciate any feedback you would be willing to provide. The TestFlight link is https://testflight.apple.com/join/Zmcwk3fW..
About the app: OCRator lets you easily access the text in an image. If you encounter an image with text in it, you can access OCRator from the share sheet and ask it to find the text in the image.
It offers the ability to view the text at whatever font size you'd like, to read the text back to you, to translate the text, or to share it with others.
The app is currently free, as in it costs nothing at all.
If there's enough interest in it, I may be able to invest the time into it to make it more useful to more people.
This is the first version that's going out to the public, so please try everything.
There are known limitations, but I'd appreciate you telling me anything that doesn't work or anything that could make this better.
I'm looking for feedback to know if this is something that people can really use of if it's something just for me.
Comments
Could you please make of it…
Could you please make of it a catalist app also available for mac? Just keep the app 100% the same, this will be even more useful on the mac and I'd completely pay for it if necessary. Great idea in any case though. Thanks a lot! It's nice to see someone actually taking the time to gather and listen user feedbacks rather than doing like he knows what we need, it's rare and even more appreciated because of that.
I just put up a Mac version.
I just put up a Mac version. at the same link as the iOS version: https://testflight.apple.com/join/Zmcwk3fW . Just open the link from a Mac and you SHOULD be able to join the beta.
Admittedly, there have been a lot of hiccups in getting it up on TestFlight. So if you can't get it to work, please let me know.
This is a VERY preliminary version. There's no share extension yet. Also, on a Mac this really should be a document-based app, which it's not. And the UX is very wonky for a macOS app. Still, it can read an image from your photos library and it can extract the text and give you all the features that the iOS app can give you.
It's not catalyst, it's a pure AppKit app written in SwiftUI, just a port from the iOS version.
Please have a look and tell me if there's anything that needs changing.
Thank you, I'll try that…
Thank you, I'll try that when I can. :)
I’ve just released a second beta
Taking some feedback and doing some things that I thought would make it more useful. Here the text from the TestFlight submission:
Thank you so much for testing OCRAtor.
I’m sorry to take so long to get a second beta version out.
This version adds some features and makes OCRator useful in more situations.
The simple:
- There are two new fonts: Open Sans (which my research says is preferred by many folks with ADHD, and by folks who use google apps a lot) and Open Dyslexic (which hopefully can be useful to folks with dyslexia)
- There are keyboard shortcuts for each of the toolbar buttons. I’m not marking them in any way in the UI yet, not sure what’s the most elegant way to do it. Since there is no typing in the UI, there are no modifiers needed for the keyboard shortcuts. Just press for example the plus button to make text larger. Honestly, I’m curious how intuitable these are, so I’d appreciate if you try various keyboard shortcuts and tell me if they make sense to you.
The slightly more involved:
There are no improvements yet in the way OCRAtor figures out the order of text. It’s sadly very suboptimal right now for anything but an image with a single column of text. I have ideas how to improve this, but it will take time.
In the meantime, I tried to make it easier (at least for sighted users) to figure out where in the image a given piece of text comes from. You can tap on a phrase in the generated text area and that region of the image will be highlighted. You can similarly tap on a region of the image with text in it and the associated text will be highlighted in the generated text area. When you do this, the speak, share and translate buttons will only operate on the text that you selected.
The technical:
OCRAtor can get images from more places now. Thanks so much for the anonymous tip about screenshots. It pointed me in the direction of figuring out how to get images read from a whole variety of sources. You can now take a screenshot and then share it with OCRAtor (on iOS only for now, sorry), and there are probably many other places where OCRAtor can read images where before it would just show a progress spinner.
Again, thanks so much. The more feedback I get, the more I know what people need out of this little thing, the more time I can spend on it. So please keep sending feedback.
— Jay
…and yes, there will be a Mac version of it
App Review wanted me to make a change before they would accept the Mac version, so it may take a little while since it's now the weekend, sadly.