The Magic and Distraction of Live Text
Starting with iOS 15, Apple introduced a powerful machine-learning feature called “Live Text.” Whenever you open a photo in your camera roll, look at an image in Safari, or even point your live camera viewfinder at a sign, the iPhone automatically scans the image for written words. It then makes that text selectable, allowing you to highlight it, copy it, or translate it exactly as if it were a standard Word document. While technically impressive, this constant background scanning can be annoying. If you are simply trying to zoom in on a photograph of a document or swipe through a gallery of posters, you will often accidentally highlight chunks of text instead of moving the image. If you find this behavior intrusive, you can turn the AI recognition off entirely.
How to Turn Off Live Text Globally
You can disable the feature across the entire operating system via the main iOS settings menu.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
- Scroll down the main list and tap on General.
- Tap on Language & Region.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
- Locate the toggle switch labeled Live Text.
- Tap the switch to turn it Off (the green background will disappear).
What Changes?
The change is immediate. You can test it by opening the Photos app and viewing a picture of a receipt or a street sign. You can now tap, hold, and swipe across the image freely. The iPhone will treat the image strictly as a dumb grid of pixels, completely ignoring any text written within the frame. If you only want to disable the feature inside the live Camera viewfinder but keep it active for saved photos, you can leave the global setting on and instead go to Settings > Camera and turn off the specific “Show Detected Text” toggle.