Microsoft revamps its OCR support for Windows 11's Photos app

Microsoft launched its OCR support, or optical character recognition, on Windows 11’s Photos app some time ago. Now, the Redmond tech giant is revamping users’ experience with it.

The company recently updated its support page for the feature, saying that it’s made the OCR button available and showing up for every image even if it doesn’t have text. So, if it doesn’t, it lets you know that OCR can’t be run on it. Besides, a cute little loading animation has also been added.

Microsoft said that it temporarily paused the OCR feature for Windows 11’s Photos app at least two months ago for whatever reason. But with this update, the company said that it’s ready to re-launch it to more Windows Insiders.

The OCR support on Windows 11 and 10’s Photos app lets you extract and copy text from images, including documents, notes, and screenshots. It also supports over 60 languages and lets you paste detected text into other apps, like Notes or Word.

Before OCR arrived on Windows 11 & 10’s Photos app, folks used to rely on third-party solutions like OneNote for this functionality.

Still from Windows 11-related updates, Microsoft is also testing customizable lock screen widgets in Windows 11, initially for European users in the EEA. The KB5050087 update lets users add, remove, and rearrange widgets like Weather and Sports, with a new “Disable Widgets On Lock Screen” policy for IT admins.

Windows 11’s market share has also grown to 36.65% as of January 2025, while Windows 10 continues to decline, now at 60.33%, ahead of its end-of-support on October 14, 2025.