A Super Simple Way To Take Notes on Physical Books

You could even say that for readers who take notes, I have this “one weird trick”

Image by the author

There is an incredibly easy way to digitally highlight text while reading a physical book, and I feel a little foolish for not doing this sooner.

These are the directions using an iPhone, and I can only imagine there is a similar experience for Androids:

1. Hold your book open with the page as flat as you can.
2. Open your camera app. Point it at the page until the text symbol appears on your screen in the bottom right (follow the arrows in the screenshot below).
3. Click this button and hold the phone still until a temporary image is taken.
4. You can now hold your finger over a word and drag the cursors to choose what you want to copy and paste, just like with any normal text on your phone.
5. Boom, now you can paste the text you copied into any kind of document you want and you never had to take a photo.
6. If you want to keep using the camera app for a different page, simply tap off to the side of the screen and the temporary snapshot will disappear. It doesn’t save this anywhere and it won’t clog up your phone with saved images.