Apple has been quietly making the iPhone camera more powerful over the years by adding new capabilities. Today, the iPhone camera isn’t just for taking photos. It’s a loaded toolkit that can help you in your everyday life. You can measure things in augmented reality, you can turn any document into a PDF, and you can grab text from anything you see. It can even translate anything into your native language.
Accurately measure anything
No tape measure, no problem; Also, use a level
Using augmented reality, the iPhone can accurately measure distance in the Measure app. I use this all the time as I can never find a tape measure when I need one. Using the app is dead simple. After a quick scan of your environment to ensure the AR works, tap anywhere in the viewfinder to set an anchor point, then press the plus icon and move the camera to where you want to place the second anchor point.
The phone will then tell you the distance between the two anchor points. Whether the Measure app shows you standard or metric measurements depends on your region, but you can always tap the measurement after it’s complete to get a conversion. Or, if you need to change your system settings between standard and metric (or vice versa), you can do so by going to Settings -> Measure -> Select Metric or Imperial.
In addition to measuring, the measure app can act as a level, ideal if you’re hanging a picture or just trying to determine if something is level.
Grab text from anywhere
Save yourself from typing
This is awesome and extremely useful. The iPhone camera can copy text from literally anything you see. To do this, open your camera app, bring it to text, and wait for the round text icon to appear in the bottom right corner. Tapping on that will bring up a text conversion box like in the image above, from which you can copy any of the text. It’s like magic! What are some interesting uses of this? Glad you asked:
- New appointment entry: Point your camera at a flyer, hit the text button, and your iPhone will give you options to add the event to your calendar or even set a reminder
- Convert your handwriting to text: If you’re old-school and you still like to write out notes on paper, the iPhone’s text copying feature will actually copy your handwriting and turn it into text. Brilliant!
- Save any phone number instantly: Point your iPhone camera at a phone number and tap the text button to quickly add it as a contact.
As I said, it’s like magic, especially the phone number swapping.
Turn any document into a PDF
Throw away your scanner
If you happen to have a scanner at home, you can throw it in the trash! The iPhone can scan single– or multi-page documents with really fantastic PDF output (some prefer alternative PDF file formats) that automatically color-adjusts each page and aligns the perspective, so the final result looks like it came from a professional document scanner. But this function is a bit hidden within the Files app.
To scan a document to PDF on iPhone, go to Files -> Tap the three-dot menu in the upper right -> Scan Documents. From there, just take a picture of each page from overhead, and when you are done, hit the blue check mark, save the PDF to your phone, and it’s ready for emailing or AirDropping.
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Bonus: translate anything you see
Just point and translate
One more cool thing the iPhone camera can do: If you bring your camera to something not in your native language and press the text button in the bottom right, the iPhone will display a Translate button on the bottom left that lets you easily and quickly translate anything you see. Side note: Gmail now has native translation.
Also, Visual Intelligence is very useful
One of the few Apple Intelligence features that actually works well
And of course, there’s Visual Intelligence, available on newer iPhones (like the iPhone 15 Pros and all iPhone 16s and 17s), and triggered by a long-press of the Camera Control button on the right side of the iPhone. With Visual Intelligence, which ties into ChatGPT, you can ask questions about whatever you’ve taken a picture of. It’s kind of like Google Lens, but much smarter. So you can, for example, take a picture of a dog, and just ask, “What kind of dog is this?” or take a picture of a plant and say, “How often should I water this?”
The iPhone Camera does more than just take pictures
It used to be that scanning documents, taking measurements, or translating text would require you to buy and use multiple third-party apps on the iPhone, but Apple has extended the iPhone camera’s functionality to do so many useful things!
