With iOS 16, Apple has made another round of breakthroughs with the Live Text feature. To surmise in a few words, you can now use Live Text to interact with videos in the Photos app or with images on websites — it is a significant leap from the limited functionality of the feature to interact just with images in the Photos app in the past.
Of course, this upgrade also brings along new possibilities to make the best use of the feature. For instance, you can now directly open, copy, share or bookmark a web link from a video available in the Photos app according to your demand.
In this post, we will show you how to use Live Text to open links from a video on your iPhone or iPad.
How to open links from a video on iOS 16
- Requirement: iOS 16 update.
Open the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad.
On the bottom, tap on Albums if you are on a different tab.
Scroll down and under “Media Types”, select the Videos folder.
Tap on any video to play it.
Tap on the “pause button” on the bottom panel when you see a web link you want to open.
At this point, you can use the “Live Text” feature to open the link in 2 ways — one method is by tapping on the Live Text icon, and the other is by tapping on the link on the paused frame on the screen. Let’s see how it is done.
Option 1: Using the Live Text icon
Tap on the Live Text icon button on the bottom right corner of the video.
You will see the browser icon with the link to open the selected web link at the bottom left corner of the video. Tap the link to open the web link in the web browser.
Alternatively, if you tap on the web link on the Live Text selection on the video, the link will open in a web browser for you.
That’s it for the first method. Now, we will show you the second method.
Option 2: Long-pressing on a link on the video
After pausing the video, long-press any web link on the pause frame.
You will see a web preview panned out in the middle with an overflow menu bearing the following options — Open Link, Add to Reading List, Copy Link, and Share.
Select Open Link to open the link in the browser.
Can you use Live Text selection on any video?
Currently, Live Text is supported only on the Photos app, the Safari browser, the Camera app, and Quick Look. So, to answer the question is — “No”. No, you cannot use Live Text on any video. For instance, if you pause a YouTube video, you won’t be able to access Live Text. Similar would be the experience if you try to pause frame and grab text or links from videos embedded using any other unsupported platform.
That’s all for now! Share your experience with Live Text with us in the comments!
