How to make iPhone camera stop recognizing text everywhere

Live Text is a very cool and useful feature. But it can be annoying every day. Here’s how to turn it off on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

When the feature was first announced, many said that Live Text was the best new feature in iOS 15. And it’s not hard to see why: the tool recognizes text in photos (or in the camera’s viewfinder) so you can copy and share it later.

But the more you use it, the more you realize it can be cumbersome. For example, when you take a photo and aim your lens at an object, you touch the object to bring it into focus, and your iPhone selects the detected text instead. In the same way, you are viewing your photos, you want to enlarge this or that picture, and instead you get a window asking if you want to go to this address.

If this behavior often annoys you, you can turn off Live Text in your device’s viewfinder, Photos app, and anywhere on your Mac.

How to turn off live text in the camera viewfinder on iPhone and iPad

This is the most boring part. If Live Text is interfering with you when taking photos, you can disable this feature for the Camera app only. Go to Settings > Camera and Show Detected Text.

How to Disable Live Text Anywhere on iPhone and iPad

If you want to turn off text recognition everywhere, this is another setting you need to activate. This setting will disable features in the Photos app, as well as things like Safari and the screenshot editor. To do this, go to Settings > General > Language & Region and then turn off Live Text.

Once disabled, this feature is disabled everywhere, including the Camera app.

How to Disable Live Text Anywhere on Mac

macOS Monterey provides Live Text for Mac, making it easy to select and copy text from any image. If you are not a fan of this feature, you can disable it. To do this, simply click on the Apple icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen, then in System Preferences > Language and Region > General, then under Live Text, turn off Select Text in Images.

If you change your mind, you can always turn it back on from this same screen.