Screen Reader Crops Screen, Impossible to Resize Box

[edwu2011]

I am using the Screen Reader Feature. I now figured out that it essentially screenshots your phone and then OCRs it. However, when I use this function, the resulting content is cropped and cuts out a lot of content on all four sides of the screen. I am losing characters on the edges but also there is no way to resize the green frame size the resize corners/nodes are hidden.

As you can see, the resulting screen is cut on the left and right sides.

I am using a Xiaomi pro 10 (MIUI 11) on the Android 10.

 

[mikelove]

Hmm... if you rotate the device into landscape orientation, does that move the box in a way that you can reposition it?

Also, have you changed the screen scaling / display size on your device to something other than the default? Does it help matters any if you temporarily set it back to the default?

 

[mikelove]

Also, it looks like the edges of the screen are cut off in this screenshot - are they cut off in the app too or is that just an artifact of how you made the screenshot?

 

[mikelove]

Also, if you tap at the corners of the box (even though there are no handles) are you able to drag them then?

 

[Heeeeelp]

I've had the same problem for about a year now. Really annoying, and to answer the question from mikelove, no, that's not how he took the screenshot, the screen actually gets cropped when the screen reader is activated. That puts text outside of the screen, and if the ocr box is big enough, it also puts the resize handles outside the screen. It's hard to express how frustrating this bug is.

I'm also on MIUI 11, using a Mix 2, 8gb/256gb, the error persists whether I choose hardware rendering or force software rendering.

 

[mikelove]

Are you using the optional "New OCR"? Does it go away if you turn that off?

 

[Heeeeelp]

Interesting. the zoom/crop does disappear if I turn "new ocr" off. However, that causes a different error. It no longer zooms and crops the entire screen, but the bottom quarter inch of the screen just goes black, and I can't exit the screen reader (I use swipe commands) unless I pull down the notifications menu and then return to the screen and then I can swipe to exit. However, this "can not exit" behavior only happens if I turn on the screen ocr while just in the launcher, as in, when I turn it on inside apps I can swipe from the right side of the screen to go back/exit. If I turn it on in the launcher I need to pull down the notifications or somehow interrupt it in order to use the back swipe to exit. Probably because when on the launcher screen the swipe isn't recognized as a back button because there is nothing to go back to, and the ocr activation doesn't register as an action that can be backed out of until pulling down the notification drawer or app switcher etc.

Another interesting behavior is the bottom gets blacked out in every app I tried except signal messenger, but only when inside a chat screen in signal, from the main contacts menu it still blacks out the bottom. The only place where everything seems to work with new ocr turned off is within a signal messenger chat, and I wonder if this has anything to do with how signal has an anti-screen capture protection enabled.

 

[mikelove]

Try the new beta version at https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.pleco.chinesesystem - does that fix the black bars? (it also adds an "X" button at the top of the screen to exit Screen OCR if it detects gesture navigation is enabled)

 

[edwu2011]

Try the new beta version at https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.pleco.chinesesystem - does that fix the black bars? (it also adds an "X" button at the top of the screen to exit Screen OCR if it detects gesture navigation is enabled)

There is not a black bar (for me at least) but the bottom 1/6th is non-functional. The OCR box cannot extend into it. It's like an artificial bottom.

 

[edwu2011]

Also, it looks like the edges of the screen are cut off in this screenshot - are they cut off in the app too or is that just an artifact of how you made the screenshot?

So recently updated it and these are the findings:
1. It no longer crops the screen
2. There is an inactive active on the bottom of the screen about 1/6 of the way up that the OCR box refuses to extend into
3. The ability to drag the box with two fingers is now gone.

Man what's going on?

 

[mikelove]

Is your phone configured to use gesture navigation? Xiaomi phones don't reliably report whether they're using that or not (the Android system API for checking that always returns the same value regardless on Xiaomi phones), so on those we act as if it was inactive (and inset the Screen OCR window accordingly) since the alternative (edges of the recognition area covered by the navigation bar) would be worse.

Is it refusing to operate in roughly the area that the navigation bar would normally operate in, or does it go higher than that? Also, is your screen configured to be zoomed in / zoomed out?

Two-finger drag: I believe that was a 'new OCR' feature, we've temporarily disabled New OCR for Screen OCR (even if it's enabled in the rest of Pleco) because we're trying to just get the basic function working reliably for everyone (in this strange new world of Every Single Android Manufacturer Doing Borderless Screens In A Slightly Different Way) and it's easier to focus on one screen at a time for that. Once we've gone through a few more releases and gotten everyone to the point where the thing actually appears where it's supposed to reliably even on the really strange phones / firmwares some of our customers are using, we'll bring those changes back to New OCR.