'Handwriting Recognition' Lets You Draw Your Words Instead of Typing Them

[Anthony Bouchard]

There certainly were some mixed feeling about Google Handwrite – a new feature from Google that allows you to perform Google searched by literally writing out your search queries instead of typing them out with the keyboard. Fortunately, there were some people that thought the idea was very creative and while it wasn’t that useful in terms of productivity, it was certainly a fun way to search the Web and demonstrated some impressive handwriting recognition technology on Google's behalf.

For those of you that thought it would be awesome to have something similar for iOS, you may be interested in a new jailbreak tweak dubbed Handwriting Recognition by iOS developer Felix. As shown above, the tweak uses Action Menu – an application by Ryan Petrich – to add a new button to the keyboard's copy and paste interface. The new button has a label that says, "draw" and tapping on it will launch an interface with a transparent-black screen and an OK button at the bottom.

In this interface, you can drag your finger around on the screen to create words and as soon as you let up from the screen for a couple of seconds, Handwriting Recognition will automatically convert your written text into keyed text with proper spacing, punctuation, and capitalization. In the case of "Sup modmyi" as shown above, the words did not create a complete sentence, so no capitalization, punctuation, or anything of the such was applied. As shown below, the tweak can be used in all applications where you can type into fields and the auto-capitalization is demonstrated as well:



If you open the Handwriting Recognition interface by mistake, tapping on the OK button will close it. Handwriting Recognition has no options to configure.

While Handwriting Recognition does a good job reading what you write, there is always the question of how practical it is to write something out instead of typing it. The fact is and remains that writing will always take longer than simply pecking at letters on the keyboard – it’s the entertainment value that counts. Some will agree and some will disagree with the tweak’s intentions, but it’s worth giving a try and keeping the kids busy for a while.

Name: Handwriting Recognition
Price: $1.00
Version: 1.0-2
Repo: ModMyi
Developer: Felix
Editor's Rating:  4/5

Sources: Cydia

[hitekksteff]

Just out of curiosity how do you rate your apps?

[amassenburg]

Does it have iPad support?

[2k1]

This seems cool gonna try it out.

[MXCO]

This tweak is pretty cool but they should integrate the button on the keyboard for faster and easier writing.

[iRevival]

This tweak is pretty cool but they should integrate the button on the keyboard for faster and easier writing.

Agreed. This would be fun to show off but it needs to be easier to access.

[sknet]

what a pity only alphabet supported i need japanese char support

[thomaspeter]

Since you mentioned about the Google handwriting in the beginning, I would like to add that I was going through Search Engine Land early this morning and according to them, Google introduction of handwriting is a step backward and Google is going backward instead of introducing new technologies. Not sure how much they are right, but i do know that they are not completely wrong!

[bigboyz]

Pretty cool..gonna give it a try!

[dmcy44]

Nice tweak! really smart! I use another handwriting recognition solution, myscript memo iOS that happens to be free. However, I need to copy paste the transcription manually. @sknet: this app supports japanese.