Live Text makes it easy to interact with text you see anywhere by pointing your iPhone's camera at it. It's available on iPhones back to the XS line running iOS 15 and later. When viewing a website, sign, poster, flyer or nearly anything in your camera frame, you can copy or share it, look up information or even translate.

All you need to do is hold your phone up, tap the Live Text button on-screen and choose the option you want. This feature is especially useful for travelers, but there are many ways to use it in everyday life, such as capturing information about an upcoming event you see on a flyer, sharing the contents of a written note with colleagues instead of taking a screenshot, looking up a website or sending an email without having to input the address, contacting a phone number posted on a sign, and converting currencies. To use Live Text with a compatible iPhone like the new iPhone 18 Pro, open the Camera app, position the desired text in the viewfinder and wait for a yellow frame to appear around the text.

Once you see that, tap the tiny grid icon (three lines with four corners around it) at the bottom-right. Choose an option from the menu, like Translate or Copy, or use the grab points to capture the portion of text you want. You can also choose to Select All.

You have tons of options to work with the selected text. A basic method is to copy and paste the contents as text into apps like Messages, Notes or Mail. Try Share for quicker sending than copy and paste can provide, or for using other methods like AirDrop.

You can also Look Up a web address or information you want to research, or Translate text in another language. Some content pulls up a quick action at the bottom of the screen for making a call, visiting a website, starting an email, converting currencies and other common actions. If you don't want to use it, you can turn Live Text off by going to Settings > Camera and turning off Show Detected Text.