As it sts now, Now on Tap is more promise than delivery. The feature launched with Marshmallow with a lot of fanfare from about how it would transform the smartphone experience. But in practice it’s only delivered occasional neat tricks.

A new feature spotted by Android lice, however, may pique your interest. It appears some optical character recognition (OCR) is at work, with Now On Tap identifying words it spots through the camera.

I tried it out myself to very mixed results. 

en pointed at a calendar filled with hwritten notes, Now On Tap found the phrase “Clift,” a mistaken rendering of the word “Cliffs.” 

Strangely even when I pointed the camera directly at Villa (the name of a hotel in San Francisco) focused in on the text, it came up with nothing.

Same thing when trying the camera with a Giants sweatshirt. As you see from the above image the team’s name logo is very prominent, but there was no dice. More easily identifiable text, like phone numbers, may work more consistently.

This is obviously very experimental, so it could get better over time or disappear entirely. Such is way the wind blows in ’s world.

y this matters: ’s image language learning is at the heart of how the company’s search prowess will evolve in the future. Now on Tap is a big part of that, OCR would certainly make the service more compelling. So give this a try keep an eye on more features that may pop up.