Just by taking a photo with your iPhone, you can digitize a recipe, handwritten notes and more.

There's a better way to digitize handwritten notes, old family recipes or any other hard paper copy you may have lying around. I'm not talking about taking a photo of the note or recipe and attaching it to an email. There's an iPhone feature called Live Text that digitizes notes (and anything else) in a snap.

Live Text is a computer vision-based tool that lets your iPhone copy and paste photos from a text using its camera, among other features. Live Text, announced at Apple's virtual WWDC developer conference, came as one of the new features available in Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 15.

Copying and pasting text from an image isn't exactly a new feature for smartphones. Android users might already be familiar with this functionality thanks to Google Lens, but for the tens of millions of people who use an iPhone, you're going to want to upgrade to iOS 15 immediately to take advantage of it.

Live Text is a little different from Google Lens, since you can use it in real time with your camera to select, copy and paste text, as the iPhone is trained to recognize useful information. As I said earlier, it makes for a helpful productivity tool for copying handwritten notes or text from images and then digitizing them.

 

How To Copy And Paste Text From A Photo

Much like Google Lens, Live Text can also search for text in images stored in the Photos app. For instance, if there's a phone number in an image, you can tap it to dial the number, or if there's a French word, you can translate it to English. 

While setting up a Snapchat account, one should be careful with the username. Once created, it is very difficult to get a new Snapchat username.

When it comes to Snapchat, users are very selective in terms of their username. But once set, can the Snapchat username be changed? Over the years, Snapchat has become one of the most popular social media applications. It enables users to communicate with photo messages (called Snaps) or videos instead of text messages. Additionally, users can also try AR-based lenses and other filters on the application that make pictures interesting and add fun to the overall experience of using the app.

The platform was launched back in 2011, roughly a year after Instagram came into existence. Today, hundreds of millions of people around the world are using Snapchat on a daily basis. It is available on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. To set up, new users need to create a username for their Snapchat account and enter a few basic details such as their date of birth and phone number. Once done, users can add their friends, customize their display name, follow content creators and explore the endless number of filters and lenses available to click Snaps. To clarify, username and display name are two different attributes that are linked to a Snapchat account.

For those who wish to download Snapchat in the future, or for users who are looking for ways to change their Snapchat username, it is unfortunately not possible to do so.

On its official support page, Snapchat says that:

"it's not possible to change your username."

As a Snapchat username is completely unique and is linked to the email ID of the user, it is used as an identifier across the app and hence cannot be changed. In addition, users cannot transfer their account data, Memories, or Snapstreaks from one username to another. For users who really don't want to use Snapchat with their current username, the only option is to delete their account and create a new Snapchat account with a fresh username, losing their account history in the process.

 

Is There An Alternative To Changing The Snapchat Username?

Even though users cannot change their Snapchat username, they can still change their display name. While a username helps Snapchat to recognize an account on the platform, the display name helps friends and other users to recognize the account. 

To change their display name in Snapchat, users can open the application and head over to the My Profile section. In the menu that opens, tap on the Settings icon (it looks like a gear) at the top right corner of the screen. 

Over here, users will find multiple fields that contain information linked to their Snapchat account, including the display name, username, birthday, mobile number, and email ID. By tapping on the field titled Name, users can view, edit and remove their display name.

A Snapchat account's display name can be changed by the user anytime they want. However, there is a catch. On the official support page, Snapchat says that "Snapchatters will continue to see the display name you chose when they first added you, but new friends should see your updated display name." Consider this another reason to be careful while setting up a Snapchat account. Snapchat also advises content creators to follow its best practice guidelines while creating their display name.