Is it possible to use OCR to read characters on a computer monitor?

amyh

Member
I've tried holding the phone camera up to the monitor, but it doesn't seem to focus...is this possible? I know that I can use OCR to translate from the screen on my phone, but the use case is when I'm at work and using a laptop and monitor as my primary tools.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
It doesn't work very well for some monitor / camera combinations - refresh rates are such that the camera keeps picking up differing images depending on where the monitor scan lines are. Do you get better results with still images instead of live OCR?

You might also try running our app in an Android emulator on your laptop, some of them support copy and paste which will get you considerably more accurate results than OCR would.
 

amyh

Member
Thanks for the suggestion on still OCR! I had not tried that, and I do get better results that way.
 
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