Be My Eyes for Windows has launched

By blindpk, 21 May, 2024

Forum
Windows

Be My Eyes just released an app for Windows. It is available in the Microsoft Store. It will let you describe your screen, the image in your camera, in a file or in the clipboard. It is very bare-bones in terms of settings, strictly speaking there are no settings, you can't even change language as of yet. The app seems to work fine otherwise, it delivers descriptions with about the same speed as the iOS app, maybe even a bit faster.

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Comments

By Brad on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

It manages to describe scenes but you need to tell it to out all the fluf or it will tell you, this is a scene from x game on youtube, the scene depicts, y, and will go on for a while.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when they add vision and all that to the app. Part of me really wants it, it'll be fasinating to listen to let's plays with a describer describing the scene but they won't be trained so it will be janky.

It can't click on things yet but if this ever gets that ability, it'll be amazing!

By Brad on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

Your title doesn't make sense to me.

By Enes Deniz on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

I don't know if this matters that much but I sign in with my Apple account on my iPhone but will have to either sign up with Google or create an entirely new account with my e-mail address.

By Justin Harris on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

Can it also call volunteers, either regular or from the directory? I could see that being helpful.

By Brad on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

You can't call volunteeers yet,, you can just describe your computer screen and pictures.

By Brad on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

So the be my eyes app said this and now it's gone,, got it.

Well I assume the AI feature is still there, they're adding new things like that directory so I think you might need to get used to a new tab. I hardly use the app so it doesn't bother me.

By Tyler on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Who else would like this brought to macOS? I know for me, there are situations where I encounter a picture on my Mac and want it described with Be My Eyes, but don't want to have to first share it to my phone.

By Cankut DeÄŸerli on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

As a mac user, I would like to use Be My Eyes on mac. Ä°t would be great. I'm thinking about writing an e-mail to Be My Eyes team after I tested the windows app myself.

By Brian on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

If this was more akin to the iOS app, it would be incredibly beneficial on any operating system. 😊

By Ekaj on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

So glad this app is being made available on additional platforms. I, too, would eventually like to see a Mac version. But for now I'm just glad to have such a robust app on my phone. I love the descriptions it gives, even when they're not quite what I'm expecting.

By kool_turk on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

Thanks for letting me know about the Sign In with Apple feature.

I'm in the same situation as you.

I'm hesitant to create another account solely for using this on Windows.

I'll hold off and see if they incorporate that option.

It's likely just an oversight; many other apps offer it, after all.

By Brian on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

The iOS app is one of those things that I do not know how I ever functioned without. Perfect example, was using it to check packages in my fridge the other day for expiration dates.

It is a small thing, and yet, was nice to be able to do it on my own, that is to say without human sighted assistance. 😇

While I would never use a PC or Mac version for that particular task, the ability to use the web cam to take photos of things to be described would be wonderful. 😀

By SSWFTW on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

I love how speedy it is. And how quickly I can ask follow-up questions

By Simone Dal Maso on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

I did some testing with the software in question and frankly it's a charme.
They will certainly have to add some options, especially maintaining the user's language, as for now he only speaks in English and you have to request a translation every time. Then, the app should remain in the system tray, not in the foreground or among the apps reachable with alt-tab.
Anyway, I managed to solve some captchas! "which of these images is a fish"?
He suggested the first and fourth and he was correct.
Too beautiful.

By Brad on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

I was able to check out videos of Lego Harry Potter, years 1 to 4, and a scene from the last of us 2, it won't get frame by frame, yet, but it will soon and the video function is going to be amazing!

By That Blind Canuck on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

So after hearing about the Be My Eyes Windows app, I downloaded and find it rather useful. Certain functions, like describing a image is a little longer process then it is using the PictureSmart AI with JAWS, but it works well enough.

The only thing I noticed though is that the buttons to describe your screen and what's on the clipboard have the word "undefined" as part of the button's label. They may want to change the label a bit and possibly remove the word "Shortcut", but for the most part, it's a pretty nice app to have in one's toolbelt.

By kool_turk on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

Well this sucks, I thought if you could use the email address Apple gives you when signing in with apple, it would be a work around, but it doesn't even do that.

It says User was created via Apple. Please login via Apple.

I'm not making another account just to log into this thing on windows.

If I can log into chat gpt and perplexity on windows through Apple, then I should be able to also do it with this, but they haven't given us that option.

No matter, I can wait.

By Brad on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

You could write to them if you like.

By kool_turk on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

I sent them an email, we'll see what happens.

Hopefully it was just an oversight at their end, so we shall see if they'll do anything about it.

By Sabrina on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

I got so excited that the first thing I did when I saw this was to get it and it absolutely rocks.

By Andy Lane on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

Just wanted to let everyone know this is on the way in the near future. There are lots of other new features on the way too but this is close to the top of the list.

By Brad on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

I don't really use the app but the windows version is great for me.

By blindpk on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

I hope one of the upcoming features is the ability to prompt when sending the first image. I think it could be easily done, place an input field in the main dialog, if there is text in it, send it along with the image. This is a feature that almost all of the alternatives lack.
Adding multiple pictures could also be nice.

By Mister Kayne on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

Can one just right click the image and say describe with Be My Eyes? I get so many images on What's app. which is configured on my desktop and I can't read the images on the application there. I need to open the image on my phone then say Share and then Describe with Be My Eyes

By Brad on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

Write to them and see what happens.

By blindpk on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

No I wouldn't say so. Maybe if you have a camera in/connected to your computer, because I don't know if you can describe a picture directly from that with PictureSmart, otherwise PictureSmart can do more things than Be My Eyes at the moment. It is unclear if either program uses the new GPT-4o model (not the real-time thing, the improved image descriptions that launched last week), if either did that could be a factor, but neither company has said anything about it.

By blindpk on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

I've encountered a bug where it says that some files are not supported when I use the "File explorer" method. It is not a file format problem, I've tried with both JPG and PNG and I get the same error. Maybe it has something to do with the dimensions or some other property of the image. I've sent a bug report to Be My Eyes about it.
Update: It had to do with dimensions. I bit of trial and error changing the dimensions in Paint made it work. The original image was 1376*921, I set it to 1400*1000 and it worked.
The original image work fine in PictureSmart btw.

By Brian on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but there is a nice add-on for NVDA called "Cloudvision". It does image recognition for images on the web, as well as images you have on your computer. The cool thing, is that in the latest release it utilizes Be my AI.

Cheers. 😀

By Brad on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

I tried it and honestly I find BeMyEyes to be faster.

By Brian on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

It suits my needs though. 🤷

By kool_turk on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 13:45

Sign in with Apple is now available, yay!

Although, I'm not sure how much I'll use this, probably for the gifs people keep replying with on Discord, that's if it even works with that.

At least I can now use it without having to create a whole new account.

By Tara on Friday, May 24, 2024 - 13:45

Hi,
I find Be My Eyes a lot faster than Picture Smart with JAWS. Really liking this app. I managed to get it to describe a scene in Minecraft.

By Brad on Friday, May 24, 2024 - 13:45

I don't need it that often but when I do it's great!

I'm a bit confused though, what does the clipboard function do?

By blindpk on Friday, May 24, 2024 - 13:45

The clipboard function describes an image you have copied to the clipboard, e.g. from a web browser.

By Brad on Friday, May 24, 2024 - 13:45

I don't think I'd use that but it's good to know.

By Enes Deniz on Friday, May 24, 2024 - 13:45

It'd be great if this worked for photos copied to the Windows File Explorer clipboard as well.

By Gokul on Friday, May 24, 2024 - 13:45

I tried copying a describtion since it was some text which I needed to get edited. And surprise! I cannot. Is it just me?

By Tara on Friday, May 24, 2024 - 13:45

Hi Gokul,
If you're using NVDA, the virtual review add-on will copy the text from the entire window you're working in.
https://github.com/ruifontes/virtualReview
This is available in the NVDA add-on store too.
Press NVDA + CTRL + W. It'll beep at you, then in a couple of seconds all the text from the Be My Eyes window is displayed including all the image description and the Be My Eyes menu. You can navigate the text box and copy things from there. I think JAWS has a similar function with the virtual buffer thing. I haven't used JAWS properly for years so can't really remember much about it.

By Socheat on Friday, May 24, 2024 - 13:45

For me, not everyone has the money to buy JAWS. So, a free alternative is always a good option.

By Gokul on Friday, May 31, 2024 - 13:45

Tried the virtualise window thing with JAWS but it didn't work.

By Michael on Friday, May 31, 2024 - 13:45

When I use picture smart with jaws, I am able to copy text no problem. What I do is select ask a question then there, you are able to copy the text.
Under jaws help with picture smart, it explains this.

By Tara on Friday, May 31, 2024 - 13:45

Hi,
And with picture smart, you can usually ask it to tell you all the content on a page of a scanned PDF document for example. I've only got a message about copyright restrictions once. Picture Smart doesn't seem to like telling you all the content on a webpage though. GPT has issues with this in general. Picture Smart is a lot slower than Be My Eyes. I prefer Be My Eyes for Windows now.

By Holger Fiallo on Friday, May 31, 2024 - 13:45

Agree. Also with picture smart, it uses 2 AI.

By Michael on Friday, May 31, 2024 - 13:45

My major use case for picture smart is having it describe youtube videos as I'm watching them.
Is there a way to get be my eyes do this, or does one have to be in the be my eyes app?

By Brian on Friday, May 31, 2024 - 13:45

A poster named Lottie? She used to post here all the time.

Then one day she learned about YouTube video descriptions via Jaws.

...and was never heard from again.

😃 😃 😃

By TJT 2001 on Friday, May 31, 2024 - 13:45

I'm pretty sure that JAWS (through picture Smart AI) can only describe individual frames of a video, so it's not video description, but just a modified version of image description, which isn't that exciting (something I wouldn't have said even a year ago). But if I'm wrong, people can correct me.

By Tara on Friday, May 31, 2024 - 13:45

I just tried this myself, and I was just about to report the same thing when you beat me to it. I checked for any JAWS updates just in case there's a new amazing feature but no. JAWS and Picture Smart does what Be My Eyes does, takes a picture of whatever is happening on the screen at the time, so a still image and describes it. It's not a continuous description of the entire video. Be My Eyes processes the image faster anyway. But still impressive though. I've often wanted to know what visual aids are used to supplement videos, and now I know. At least I can get a description for a certain point in a video.