Gboard for Android is getting a text scanning feature

One of the features of Google Lens is the ability to scan text. This makes it perfect for copying WiFi passwords, email addresses, translating text, and so on. The only issue is that you need to launch Google Lens to use the feature. Thankfully, that will change if you use Gboard on Android which now comes with a text scanning feature.

Google has started to roll out a new feature for Gboard on Android that will allow users to quickly scan text. This is essentially a similar feature on Google Lens, except that you can now launch it in Gboard itself. This means that users won’t need to close the app they are using and launch a separate app.

By launching the text scanning feature in Gboard, it will pull up a viewfinder that you can then use to hover over images or documents whose text you want to scan. Users can then snap an image and extract the text that the app detects and insert it into whatever message you are writing.

The feature was initially spotted back in November last year, but now it looks like it is being rolled out to the latest Gboard beta. If you’re not on the beta, you won’t see it yet, but hopefully it won’t be too long before Google releases it to the public.