36 8 – 21 June 2022 • Issue 633
Support for
Apple Pencil
(1st Generation)Support for
Apple Pencil
(2nd Generation)
iPad mini (5th
generation)iPad mini (6th
generation)
iPad (6th
generation and
later)iPad Air (4th
generation and
later)
iPad Air (3rd
generation)iPad Pro 11in (all
generations)
iPad Pro 9.7in iPad Pro 12.9in (3rd
generation and
later)
iPad Pro 10.5in
iPad Pro 12.9in (1st
and 2nd generation)How I use handwriting recognition
How do you use handwriting-recognition tools?
Please let us know: [email protected]On the rare occasions that I need to use handwriting recognition,
it’s most often to capture things that I jotted down years ago,
having rediscovered them quite by chance, and would rather not
type from scratch. In the longer term, though, I see myself using
this as a tool to digitise long-gone relatives’ diaries and letters so
they can be passed on to future generations.
Nik Rawlinsonusing an Apple Pencil
stylus on a compatible
iPad, and convert it into
the typed equivalent
in real time (ie, as you
write). It’s available
when you have one of
the combinations of
Pencil and iPad shown
in the table below.
Start by checking that
Scribble is enabled on
your device by opening
Settings and tapping
Apple Pencil in
the sidebar. Make sure
the slider to the right
of Scribble is switched on
(see screenshot above right).
Now use the installed Safari browser to
visit a web page that features a form and
write into one of the text fields. After a
second or so, your iPad will convert your
handwriting into typed text.
You can also use the Apple Pencil for
longer passages of text. Open the Notes
app, create a new note and tap the pencillogo at the centre of the group of five
icons at the top right of the window.
Write on the screen, and Notes will
convert your handwriting to typed text.
We found it impressively accurate – even
when we used joined-up writing.
If you make a mistake, Scribble has a
few extra features up its sleeve to help
you correct errors. Draw a vertical line
between two characters and it will insert
a space. Do the same in an existing space,
and the space will be removed so the
words on either side are pressed together.
Draw a horizontal line through text to
select it, and draw a circle around an area
to select the contents.
You don’t need to be entirely accurate
when you do this, because iPadOS selects
complete words. So, if you had written
‘how are you feeling today?’ and circled
‘you’ but strayed slightly into ‘are’ and
‘feeling’ either side, all three words would
be selected. You can then apply whatever
formatting you require, or use the pop-up
toolbar to copy, paste, translate, look up
or share the selected text.
You can also cut the text from the
same toolbar, but there’s a quicker wayourselves made an error. For example,
it rendered ‘a wife’ as ‘anoite’ (^1 in our
screenshot above) which, considering
our handwriting, is probably forgivable.
Likewise, it wasn't convinced by the ‘v’
we wrote over the top of the erroneous
‘w’ in ‘uniwersally’^2. Despite needing
to correct these slips, converting our
handwriting to text was much quicker
than retyping from scratch.
To export your recognised handwriting,
you’ll need to sign up for a plan. These
start at £1.99 a month or £9.99 a year,
giving you an unlimited amount of text
exports between each renewal. There’s
also a lifetime plan for £25.99.
Google Lens was similarly accurate,
and the fact it’s built into Android
makes it more convenient than the apps
mentioned above. Tap the lens icon at
the end of the search box on the Android
home screen and take a picture of the
handwriting you want to capture. By
default, Lens will search for similar
results on Google Images, but tap Text
and it will highlight and recognise the
text it’s found. Now tap ‘Select all’ and
you can copy it for free, then paste it
into another app. In our case, it even
recognised the source of the text as Pride
and Prejudice.
While the results were good when
working with our sample, it swapped
around a few of our words and missed
out a couple of others. It failed to correct
our ‘w’ and ‘v’ slip-up in ‘universally’ and
switched the order of the last few words
in the second paragraph. Considering it’s
free, though, we find these minor errors
easy to overlook.Convert live
handwriting on iPad
Version 14 and later of Apple’s tablet
operating system iPadOS has a tool called
Scribble that can recognise text writtenThe app
‘Pen to
Print’ made
a couple of
excusable
slip-ups
due to our
own untidy
writingTurn on Scribble for your iPad in the settings1
2