2025-06-28
Why is it necessary to push options?
If I am blind it is not useful
Updating
iPhone Screenshots
iPad Screenshots
Description
Seeing AI is a free app that narrates the world around you. Designed with and for the blind and low vision community, this ongoing research project harnesses the power of AI to open up the visual world by describing nearby people, text and objects.
Seeing AI provides tools to assist with a variety of daily tasks:
• Read - Hear text as soon as it appears in front of the camera. Document alignment provides audio cues to capture a printed page and recognize the text along with its original formatting. Ask Seeing AI about the contents to easily find the information you need.
• Describe - Take photos to hear a rich description. Ask questions to focus on the information you care about. Explore photos by moving your finger over the screen to hear the location of different objects.
• Products - Scan barcodes and Accessible QR codes using audio beeps to guide you; hear the product name and package information when available.
• People - Save photos of friends and coworkers so you can recognize them later. Get an estimate of their age, gender, and expression.
• Currency - Recognize currency notes.
• Find My Things - Teach Seeing AI to recognize your personal objects and follow the audio cues to find them later.
• World - An Audio Augmented Reality experience to explore an unfamiliar environment, including hearing objects announced around you with Spatial Audio (requires a device with a LiDAR, and iOS 14+).
• Colors - Identify colors.
• Light - Hear an audible tone corresponding to the brightness of your surroundings.
• Photos and Videos in other apps - Just tap “Share” and “Recognize with Seeing AI” to describe media from Mail, Photos, WhatsApp, and more.
• Browse Photos - Hear descriptions of photos and videos saved on your device.
Seeing AI continues to evolve as we hear from the community, and AI research advances.
Visit http://SeeingAI.com for more details.
Questions, feedback or feature requests? Email us at SeeingAI@Microsoft.com.
What's New in Version 5.5.1
This release includes several bug fixes to make your experience even better.
Information
Developer
Categories
Version
5.5.1
Size
326.6 MB
Game Center
No
VPP Device Licensing
Yes
Rating
Rated: 4+
Compatibility
iOS 12.0 or later
Devices
iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPhone SE (2nd generation), iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone SE (3rd generation), iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 16e, iPad (5th Generation) Wi-Fi, iPad (5th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (6th generation) Wi-Fi, iPad (6th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro, iPad Pro (Cellular), iPad Pro (9.7-inch), iPad Pro (9.7-inch) (Cellular), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro (10.5-inch), iPad Pro (10.5-inch) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro (11-inch), iPad Pro (11-inch) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air, iPad Air (Cellular), iPad Air 2, iPad Air 2 (Cellular), iPad Air (3rd generation), iPad Air (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad mini Retina, iPad mini Retina (Cellular), iPad mini 3, iPad mini 3 (Cellular), iPad mini 4, iPad mini 4 (Cellular), iPad mini (5th Generation), iPad mini (5th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (7th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 11-inch (2nd generation), iPad Pro 11-inch (2nd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (4th generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (4th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air (4th Generation) (Wi-Fi), iPad Air (4th Generation) (Wi-Fi + Cellular), iPad (8th generation) Wi-Fi, iPad (8th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 11-inch (3rd generation), iPad Pro 11-inch (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th Generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (9th Generation), iPad (9th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad mini (6th Generation), iPad mini (6th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air (5th generation), iPad Air (5th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 11-inch (4th generation), iPad Pro 11-inch (4th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (6th generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (6th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (10th generation), iPad (10th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air 11-inch (M2) Wi-Fi, iPad Air 13-inch (M2) Wi-Fi, iPad Air 13-inch (M2) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) Wi-Fi, iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) Wi-Fi, iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad mini (A17 Pro) Wi-Fi, iPad mini (A17 Pro) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (A16) Wi-Fi, iPad (A16) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air 11-inch (M3) Wi-Fi, iPad Air 11-inch (M3) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Air 13-inch (M3) Wi-Fi, iPad Air 13-inch (M3) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPod touch (6th Generation), iPod touch (7th generation)
Languages
English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
App Store: Customer Ratings
Ratings & Reviews
4.3 of 5 (602 Ratings)
App Store: Customer Reviews
2025-05-27
This app isn’t reliable
Whenever I take a picture in the describe tab, it almost never works. It always says try again later. Or it cuts out of the app entirely. This app never works. Try something else.
2025-04-15
I don’t eat it a lot, but it doesn’t recognize text. That’s my problem. I don’t use it a lot it just
I think it’s really bad even though the reason I wanted to give it three stars is because when I tried to put it over or something, it doesn’t even recognize anything
2025-04-12
A very powerful tool, but...
Overall this is the most useful app on my phone. However, I'm getting sick of the occasional reset of settings between launches. EG. I'll have my channels ordered and everything set the way I want and scan some mail, money etc.
A few days later I need to scan one simple thing and I'm forced to bypass/skip the little introduction to Seeing AI thing. When i'm in a hurry and having to faff about with things I already did, I consider uninstalling this app and just looking elsewhere. I understand this is free, and how we should all be grateful. But this is a longstanding issue and I'm tired of the reset btn being pressed in Seeing AI configuration so I have to set everything up again. Oh, and that includes the annoying tutorial popups for each mode. As if I haven't used this app for 7 years regularly now. Please please address this and soon. There's probably more people out there experiencing this random reset behavior and too nice to be critical of a free app.
Other than that, one of the best recognition apps and I've tried them all.
2025-03-26
Life-changing App
This app completely changed my life the day I discovered it over two years ago, and I've used it almost every day since. It's a must-have for blind independant living.
2025-03-15
Love this app, but hate recent updates
This app was great until recently. I used this app to scan money, scan products, and read text, but the recent updates have made it very terrible for me. You can no longer do money scanning on the app, and they took away the really short text feature, so now you have to take a picture of the document which is not easy for some people, even with the camera help. Seeing AI team, If you see this, please bring back the old features of the app.
2025-03-12
Instant text reading upon opening the app
"Please reinstate the instant text reading feature that Seeing AI previously offered upon opening the app. Additionally, consider adding an option to capture photos using the volume up and down buttons on iPhones and Android devices, as this would greatly improve ease of use."
2025-03-12
Good
My VI student enjoy this app but finds it difficult to move to the proper location. Training is required on where and how to orient the phone.
2025-02-22
Do not update to the new version!
This app used to be great, but it got much worse with the new “streamlined“ interface. The instant read function never worked well, but the handwriting channel was awesome. Combining those was a huge mistake. Once your app updates to the new version with the new integrated reading tool, you can’t go back to the good one. Hopefully they can fix the reading problem in the future.
2025-02-19
OCR function hidden
I don’t care at all for the recent update. I use Seeing AI mainly to OCR documents. I liked being able to read line by line and cut and paste various items. This function is now hidden under layers of AI which I don’t find nearly as useful.
2025-02-12
Used dayly
I depend on this🦯
2025-02-08
long review, such a good app.
the updates keep getting better, from the jumping text, they fixed it, to the document channel being sluggish and now that's fixed. microsoft is doing an excellent job and no account needed and this all free. love it. my one thing is I would love the seen preview and where you share photos from the share sheet to have a way to interact with the AI like you can now in the document channel. these guys brought much more rich descriptions to the seen and share sheets, but theres no interactions with it, if you could ask it followup you would have a 5 star app I think. edit, you can now ask seeingAI questions about your photo, this is fantastic. I have no problem recommending this app and the other thing i'll say is working with microsoft's seeingAI staff via email you get quick responces. I do not work with them but what I mean is like emailing them, their turnaround time has ben rather snappy I feel. they seem to really get blind people with their seeingAI here and its just getting better.edit, as of Version 5.5, the interface is much more streamlined, I didn't think it possible to make it any easier but they did, and they blended a few channels into one, like the read tab is short text and document all in one and you also have the option to toggle with a button with document alignment and you can even take a photo in that tab. theres so much more they did and its just excellent and we still get access to the older stuff. I love the describe tab updates, now you get a rich description right out of the gate when you snap a photo or load one. its excellent thank you so much Microsoft and team over at seeing AI.
2025-02-05
Great app!
I just downloaded this app, and so far, I’m really impressed with its functionality. Please keep it going! I’m not blind, nor is my dad, who I actually downloaded it for. He was diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia, which causes hallucinations, making it difficult for him to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not. He once mentioned that he wished he could point his phone at something and have it tell him whether it was real. That led me to search for apps, and I came across this one.
We plan to use it during his episodes—either he can use his phone himself, or we, as caregivers, can assist him—so he can have confirmation of reality. I’m especially impressed with the describe feature and how detailed it is in explaining what’s being seen. So far, I’m really happy with it. Keep up the great work!
2025-02-04
Good morning my name is Ulises Gomez The interface is a lot more easier to use Congratulations for u
Good afternoon Seeing AI team my name is Ulises Gomez and I am giving this wonderful application. A rating of five stars. I love your application. It has helped me to scan barcodes and other things. I really enjoy this application a lot keep up the great work sincerely Ulises.
2025-02-04
this app is useful for so many different things. Keeps getting better and more reliable. One of my f
this app is useful for so many different things. Keeps getting better and more reliable. One of my favorite apps on iOS
2024-11-03
The best app I ever used
This app is what my most favorite apps. It helps me get around and and it’s funny too.
2024-11-03
No limit, because it is just tomorrow. It’s not yesterday, it’s today, not yesterday, cause I’m not
I don’t wanna limit for video descriptions, because otherwise I have someone around me. But I don’t want anyone around me. You don’t know morning? Well of course it’s the morning right now
2024-11-01
Very good
Thank you for this app. It is very useful. It helped me get my clothes. But I also downloaded some photos from other apps and it told me what it was. One example is it recognized a Ferris wheel it’s said wheel, Ferris wheel, tourist attraction. It also said people waiting for the bus at night.
I’m updating my update tonight. I discovered that this app can describe videos. But the video has to be two minutes or less. The five minute mark is too large for the video. And it can only give you 10 videos per day. But if you delete the app and start over, you can do as many videos as you want. can you please fix that so the videos can be more than five minutes? thank you.
2024-10-04
I would not recommend this app
Be my AI is better than Seeing AI because I was pushing the button where I could help me not to call volunteer but the one we were describes more not the one where it gives you different items. I don’t really like this app. It’s not very good. I wouldn’t recommend it.
2024-10-01
Garbage
Garbage app absolutely irresponsible, one of the worst apps to ever exist
2024-05-06
amazing app
I like all of the features on the app so far. Use Seeing AI help me look for things and two things papers and random stuff. Only because I’m blind.. But anyways keep up the good work and I like this app.. Find my things it’s a great feature. That’s one of my favorite ones.
2024-04-27
Essential app
By far the best assistive app for the blind and low vision. All for free. Microsoft has done a solid for our disabled community. An absolute essential for anyone with low or no vision.
2024-04-26
Short Text Channel Is Unacceptably Inconsistent in Reading Digital Displays
Overall, I have found this app very useful and accomplishing day-to-day tasks such as identifying canned goods or sorting the mail. However, it is very inconsistent ( and unacceptably so) in its ability to read the output of digital displays. FYI, I am speaking throughout this review of the short text channel. I use this app every day to read my kitchen scale for making coffee and for other reasons. At times, it reads the output quickly and accurately. At other times, it takes a very, very, very, very, very long time to read the display. Words are inadequate to describe the frustration I feel when a 30-second task turns into a 10-minute one, draining my phone battery all the while. If a pair of human eyeballs can read the display, then there should be no reason why Seeing AI cannot also read it. This problem seems particularly exacerbated by readings that end in either 1 or 7 (such as 21 G). The app has no problem reading the labels of the buttons on the scale, but it all too often fails to read literally the only thing on the display I want to hear. Perhaps a new channel could be created in the app that is optimized specifically for the reading of displays. Please work on this! In a world in which many home appliances are still inaccessible, it is more important than ever that blind people have access to an app like Seeing AI that is capable of reading a display. My rating reflects the frustration caused by the app's seeming inability to accomplish one of its core functions in situations that I need it most. I commit to updating my rating when this issue is addressed.
2024-04-22
Wow blown away
I love the option to explore the image with Ai. You can move your finger around and it will give you all the information at you finger tip. Awesome
2024-04-10
Something wrong with the find my things feature
so the app is great but the find my things feature is kind of broken for me. So I set it up with my water bottle, and tested it to see how it worked, so I clicked on what I named it and it closed the app. I tried a second time, and the same thing happened. It’s be great if that issue is looked into. Great app!
2024-01-31
camera not working with all products
I am a completely blind user of this app. I love the app 😊 I use it with voice over the screen mirror on Apple products with my iPhone. The only problem that I am seeing is it does not do a good job when you try to use it with those 2 L bottles of pop that people get Voice is not reading me any of the information the camera isn’t working and whether I use the short text or document mode it doesn’t work and doesn’t help and also voiceover is having trouble. It doesn’t say hold steady every time to know the cameras in the right place and lined up it’s not telling me every single time I think it’s a bug please fix all this if you can and add another mood for reading labels on 2 L bottles of pop. Thank you.
2024-01-12
About the adaptation of Chinese
I hope that the App can be developed and adapted to Chinese and adapted to mainland China.
2024-01-07
Blind person can’t touch screen buttons.
So, how do the developers expect a blind person to touch the screen for functionality? Siri commands do not process a scene without touching the screen. The app is a great idea, but you should probably get someone who is blind to test this app. My 90 year old mother just lost her vision completely and has been an iPhone user for 7 or 8 years and is struggling to use this app. Keep updating and keep improving, please.
2023-12-29
You should read this I highly approve of the CI app
Hello I am blind and I use the Seeing AI app. It works. My only complaint is that we can’t wear a camera or and it is in progress to use the world setting for indoor use only at the moment it would make sense to me that person could make maybe glasses that you could wear with the success of the Seeing AI app in them or you could hold your phone up and it could describe the world around you, and if it could get good enough at this, you could walk around and be told some of how to get around you were still use your cane with the other hand, it also might be good if you had a FaceTime option and you had a live person that could come through and see what you’re looking at on the phone when your loan so they can describe things for you should be another good option for them to add and how come, they’re not helping the blind get those cars that I should do drive we’re supposed to be helping the disabled I approve of the Seeing AI app if you could get the cameras in glasses and have that app and maybe a FaceTime person person with ice blind could possibly navigate streets they would still want to pay attention with their cane
2023-09-30
No place to report wrong product in products mode.
Before now, all problems that I had run into seemed to be fixed, but now, I ran into an issue with a wrong product. I was looking for my members Mark onion powder, and instead of telling me that it was onion powder, it told me that it was GV thin spaghetti. I obviously knew that was not thin spaghetti, and decided to start opening packages to see what they were so that I could find the right thing. It turned out that what it told me was spaghetti, was the onion powder that I was looking for. it's fortunate for everybody in my household that I'm not the one with the cold that I was making soup for, or we could've ended up with something really off the wall in the soup because I wouldn't have been able to smell it. The problem is, when we run into a problem like this, there's no button to report a problem, so it's going to start telling everybody that members mark onion powder is great value thin spaghetti, which if you shake it, it's obviously not, and it's not even in a container that thin spaghetti would be in, but for somebody who has never cooked, or is just learning, they won't know that it's the wrong kind of package. Spaghetti is typically in cellophane or cardboard, and this giant thing of onion powder is a plastic container. This is something that we need. We need to be able to report a wrong product if it's telling us that it's one thing, when it isn't. I have known older people who store everything in the same place, whether it's edible or not, if it's kitchen related, it goes in the cupboard, regardless. I have known people who have stored rat poison in the same cupboard as spices because it's too high for kids to get into, and I would really hate for somebody to put rat poison in their food by accident because this app told them that it was something edible. I'm not one of these people, and don't even keep rat poison in my house, but unfortunately, I know people who do. I could see this being a deadly mistake if we don't have a place to report wrong product uPC's. also, in one developer response to somebody, it says go to seeingai.com to see improvements in the app, but that just takes us right back here to the App Store.
2023-09-26
seeing AI
I love this app, but is it possible to update it to be compatible with iOS 17?
2023-09-21
Seeing AI app will not open
I gave this at five stars because it’s a great app for the blind and visually impaired. But now I’m having a problem with the Seeing AI app it will not open. I depend on this app a lot for reading my mail and I am very aggravated because I cannot do that anymore. Can you please give me some suggestions on what I should do thanks.
2023-09-14
Currency
Best app for the visually impaired community. It helps on a lot of things like reading products, documents and being able to distinguish currency. The app has also helps me with indoor navigation. I would love for this app to integrate honduras lempiras currency, it will be easy for other blind people to have low resources that aren’t able to pay for other apps that requires payments to read money thanks for reading this review.
2023-08-28
Excellent tool!
So useful in so many daily activities. Probably the most useful bits have been the text recognition for me, but there’s just lots of possibility here, and I hope the developers continue to imagine and grow the product! Thank you for making my life as a blind person, easier!
2023-08-02
Pls make this app more screen reader friendly
I used this wpp often but their sre times i half to turn of coiceover in order to use i
2023-05-21
This app is really low quality
Based on all of AI advancement in the past decade this app is an absolute garbage, people with disabilities has been discriminated all the time and this is just one of it. Giving them tha bare minimum.
2023-05-15
Frank Slade
TWIMC:
Pet peeve. Perhaps I am the only one with this issue but, the moment I hear “hold steady“, is the very moment when I begin to jitter. It’s kind of like when someone tells you, “don’t look down“. what if you were to skip the“hold steady“ command, and go straight to take the picture?
2023-03-03
اضافة الغة العربية
عزيزي المطور التطبيق رائع لكن المكفوفين العرب يطلبون منك اضافة الغة العربية حتى يستطيعون استخدامه وشكرا لك
2023-02-23
Seeing AI App
Overall the app is pretty good except for the first few.
2023-02-15
New features in Seeing AI not working as expected
I totally like this app. I’ve been using it ever since I first found out about it. However, I’m not thrilled with the new features that are available. This is because, they don’t work as expected and or the app crashes when I go to run it. At least the app crashes when I go to run these new features. This includes the world view as well as the indoor navigation view. Microsoft, you definitely need to fix this so that these features won’t crash out.
2023-02-14
Bug with Shortcuts
This fabulous app no longer works with Shortcuts on my iPhone XR, and iPad 8th Gen, running current iOS software Worked perfectly before software updates. What's up? Will Microsoft fix this bug
2022-12-11
Use to be great. Now just good.
Had I left a rating sooner, it would be 5 stars. For the past several months, text detection has gotten worse. I use the app frequently to identify canned foods, and the short text feature was great for this. It would immediately start reading the cans. Now it takes me a couple minutes just to get it to read anything useful from the can to know what it is. Having an iPhone 14 Pro camera makes no difference from when I had a 12 Mini. One would think a better camera would help. Recent app updates hasn't improved anything for me either. Now I mostly use it for light detection to turn lights off at night. This is still a good app for a free service that is useful to the blind.
2022-10-13
Can you please add Indian languages
Great App and my heartfelt wishes for the development of this app. Can you please add South Indian languages like Telugu Tamil Hindhi?
2022-09-08
A blind person cannot use it
I am blind but unfortunately I cannot use this app with VoiceOver. The app does not announce the tab names and buttons. Once it does something - for example opens a dialog “product was not found” — it’s impossible to close it — without asking for help from someone who can actually see. This defeats the whole purpose of this app.
2022-05-24
Very Useful
I wrote a very negative review here a few days ago, and I regret that. The app is back to it's normal very good performance. Wish I could find and delete the former review
2022-05-17
fabulous app
this app is nothing short of brilliant. Microsoft hit this out of the park. It’s very frustrating to have the web content accessibility guidelines and companies don’t use it resulting in horrible user experience. kudos to the accessibility team at Microsoft!
2022-04-18
Great app
A great app. Its a beta version but, its more then I expected. Maybe a feature recognizing objjects combined with the lidar technology would make the app perfect. I have some ideas I will provide. I give it a 4 but will give a 5 for the effort in such a short time.
2022-03-25
Very Good
This is a good app for those who are visually impaired and blind. There could be a few improvements needing to be made, such as object detection to be more accurate, but overall, this is a very good app, and helpful and useful for the blind and visually impaired.
2022-03-07
Crashes
This app will not open for me. I uninstalled, and reinstalled seeing AI more times than I’d like to admit. I’ve done all the troubleshooting steps, and it still does not work. Before the crashes started, this App was my go to for a lot of things. Especially the code scanner. Please fix this issue. I would like to continue to use this app.
2022-01-07
Text regognizing
This is one of my favorite applications. But a few weeks ago I had an iPhone 13 and the option to recognize the images doesn't work for me. I hope this problem can be solved soon since it is an option that I use all the time
2021-12-10
Currency
So happy to see you finally added Philippine peso. Thanks much
One more thing I have a suggestion if possible can you put a tone or vibrate notification in the app to let us know that the app is still open so we won’t forget to close it because the camera will still be on sometimes and I forget. Cash reader has such a thing and it’s very good because you do know you need to close the app.
2021-11-28
Seeing AI
I am so pleased to see that you made this up and it's great that it's been so important and so helpful I love the Prague channel and when they move the camera to the barcode it reads it out loud so I would like to say thanks for making this up I would really appreciate it if you could still update the app I love it so so much we changed the product channel for the first time on my iPhone and it works so darn well and because of all this I am totally reading it five stars thank you so so much
2021-10-25
Winner!
Love this app. I lost my vision three years ago and was told that this app is very useful. I use it almost daily on the go in at home. Everything works pretty seamless except for the color reader which can be kind of an accurate at times. It would be amazing if you guys can add some thing that would be able to read digital clocks. Unfortunately a lot of my devices in my home have digital clocks like my stove my washing machine my thermostat etc. I do use a lot of smart devices in my home but some of them are not able to be hooked up to my smart devices. So it would be pretty cool if I could hold the phone in front of the stove to see what temperature the oven is on or how much time is left on the washing machine etc. Overall absolutely love this application. Keep up the good work
2021-10-14
Makes my life a little bit easier
This app makes my life much easier. While not being totally blind but with about 5% vision I can still see the little icons in the bottom. Haven’t used everything yet but the short text, document reader, currency, and color has come in very handy. You know you don’t want to look silly and where mismatch clothes lol.
So I just use the product tab and figured out there was another icon that it would read me more information. The short text doesn’t always read the instructions well for heating but the extra product info gave me all the information I needed. This app matched with my Alexa microwave/oven/air fryer is going to be absolutely marvelous together. Thank you for this app and thank you for continuing to update it.
2021-09-26
It's so helpful!
I'm visually impaired and I always had to ask people to read things to me or discribe things for me. That wasn't always easy because there wasn't always people around me. But when I found this app I was like yay this will help me a lot! And it is helping me so much! Now when I want something discribed for me all I have to do is go to Seeing AI. Thank you so much for making this app!
2021-06-24
Thank you for giving me back my independence
I recently became blind. Your application has allowed me to be able to read my mail and read products that I have at home on my shelves and allowed me to pay the taxi driver using your money identifier without fear of being ripped off. I would like to see the barcode scanner improved with more product availability. A lot of times it just says no description available. I would love to see this app available on the Mac so that I can scan my mail using my scanner. Just a thought :-)
2021-04-24
Best app for blind and visually impaired that I’ve ever seen
Absolutely love this app I use it all the time because whenever I buy groceries sometimes I may forget what I bot I need to figure out where to put it but sometimes it is hard for me to read the letters on boxes and things either because the letters are too small or the letters are too different from just normal print text seriously love this app. Thankyou! The only thing that I would say I would like to have if it’s even possible is I have a very hard time with expiration dates I always have to have someone come down and read it for me and I have not found a single app that has been able to find and read expiration dates don’t know if that’s possible if not that’s fine it would just be nice thing to have I’m even very skeptical about eating things in my fridge and pantry just because I don’t know if it’s any good or not and I don’t wanna have to call someone to say hey can you come tell if this is good or not so it definitely is a real problem for me don’t really know what else to do so if that is a feature that is possible to be added it would be great but again I very much love this app it has made my life so much easier thank you again
2021-01-14
Blind Chicks View
Pro’s -
• Does what it says, how it says without glitches or ads.
• Doesn’t try to profit off the disability of others, giving us what comes free to others.
Con’s -
• People Recognition has to be done by taking their picture & many refuse to allow that. It would be easier if it can be done by a previously taken photo. This way permission isn’t needed to know who is around you!
• Vague description on objects & animals. Would love to know if it’s my dachshund or Chihuahua eating or just came in, I already know both are dogs!
Tips -
• To be a navigational assistance as well can erase the need of multiple apps & can be the one stop shop for the blind!
• Adding the option to use previous taken photos to recognize those around us.
I have been blind 6yrs & have used this app for 4 of them years. Sometimes I forget I’m blind due to this app! I recommend it on every device with a blind operator!
2020-10-21
Absolutely Incredible!
I use this with my musical keyboards all the time, which have menus and windows that wrap around from top to bottom and therefore can’t be reliably navigated. My clothes are no longer mismatched and folding and sorting money is now much more managable. Best of all, my cables are color-coded for easy setup on a live gig, and now I have no problem with setup. Oh, and my little dog loves to be recognized too.
2020-06-27
Wonderful App!!
My brother is blind and has been living independently for a few years now. Occasionally I'll head over and get a few questions -- maybe which flavor of a product is which. Maybe he received a few dollars back and he didn't know which was the 5 and which was the 1.
This app is able to help him with almost all of those questions, help make his life a little easier, and move him closer towards independence.
It's very generous of Microsoft to offer this app for free to help the blind!
2019-12-20
Short Text has helped me a lot in my life
I’m a user from China .I like Short Text very much .Although this app don’t support Chinese ,I can’t download in my country’s App Store,I still find a way to get this app ,because it’s very useful for me .I often use short text to recognize some papers such as invoice ,menu ,note,etc...So I hope you can download in China’s store and support Chinese in the future version .
2019-12-10
This is the most useful app on my phone
The reason my rating is two stars is because it is super annoying to hear no edges visible top and right edge not visible left edge not visible bottom corner not visible bottom edge not visible and no edges visible
Maybe you could make it where it’ll say a little more to the right down up left right and then it would say move the phone away from the text and then eventually it would just say hold steady and take the picture
And when I hold my phone in front of text for short text it’s just reads about a quarter of the text and it makes no sense because it puts it in different orders and it makes no sense to me
And for my book reader when I hold it in front of the barcode it starts making big score faster and faster and then but it never takes the picture of the beeps just freeze and the app crash crashes
What I’m trying to say is when I hold the phone over a barcode the beeps just get faster but then when it’s about to take the picture of the beep slow down and then stop and the app restarts so please make these updates right away I mean right now
2019-11-13
A Dream Come True
This app is literally a dream come true for not only people who are blind or low vision but also for the profoundly dyslexic or otherwise print disabled people. My son is profoundly dyslexic and despite being 14 years old his ability to read print with his eyes is less than a first grade equivalent. We have tried and use many apps and other technologies to help him access the world of print. Despite his struggles, he is a voracious consumer of audiobooks and this app allows him to access print around the environment with so much less effort than other apps. It also has very good accuracy. I also think the facial expression recognition feature has potential to assist people with Autism. Frankly, this app is just plain wonderful!!!!
2019-10-06
I! Love! This! App!
i’ve tested out all the features Microsoft has put into the app and so far all of them are up to par. It would be nice, if there would be a way that you could use the USB port to link up to freedom scientific‘s jaws and use it as an OCR device. It would be a way cheaper, and far more accurate Version of the purl camera that ships with openbook or any other program that freedom scientific ships. More people with Windows PC’s use jaws, than any other screen reader such as narrator, NVDA, system access, or any other windows screen reader. Thanks.
2019-03-18
Great app ...
This is a great app. It has many very useful features, but i cannot seem to get the document reader to work for me since the latest update. Both on my iPhone and iPad, when I updated the app to the latest version (version 3), and try using the document reader I always get the message “sorry, something went wrong, please try again in a few moments
“.
2019-02-17
Great app I hope this keeps up
I love this application especially when I seem to be in a jam. I can have mail read to me as well as products that I have purchased from the store. There’s just one small complaint. I noticed today that when I scanned a barcode, the app crashed. I’m not sure if Microsoft will continually work on this app so that updates can continue and things that I have mentioned above will not happen. I certainly hope so. Keep up the good work.
2018-11-09
Overall a very useful and important app
Update: someone recently asked me about useful apps for the blind. I told them that seeing AI app was like the Swiss Army knife for blind people. I think that is the Best way to describe this app.
I love several of the channels that this app provides. The product, document and short text are great. The document channel especially is great. I purchase another app a while back for $100 and this app works better. I love that I do not have to presss a button to take the picture.
I found the person channel fun, but not very useful. I do not find the color channel accurate. I have better success with tap tap See for colors. I used the color channel on a white shirt and when it was on the sleeves it would say grey and on the front or back of the shirt it would say brown.
The currency channel is just as good as the other apps available It is very accurate.
2018-11-07
Needs a PDF channel.
I truly love this iPhone application As someone who is completely blind. I have only one thing that could make this app better. Please add a PDF conversion channel. I cannot even say how many times I receive digital documents from professors and others in my college experience. This is just something that is essential for me personally, but if it was able to be added to the app that would be great.
2018-07-20
Rivals KNFB reader in many ways
The short text reader is very quick and mostly accurate. Great for on the fly reading of bottles lotions and things like that. The document reader is very cool. You just hold it over the document and wait for it to take the picture as you were just. The other tabs did some work that’s why I only gave it a four star rating. It’s nice that when the document is processed it even keeps most of the formatting. KNFB reader does not do that. It just runs everything together. Very nice product. I wonder how long it will be free?
2018-06-09
Actually pretty accurate
The only reason why I downloaded this was to see if it could register my penis sadly it did not must have been too small ☹️ but the other objects I pointed it at were really accurate also how will a blind person find the button to take the picture you should add the feature where you press the volume button to take the pic
2018-05-23
Many uses!!!
Love this app so much. I like how it has so many different uses all in one app. I hate when I have to download a bunch of apps that I don't even know will work, but this one does work for sure. I still can't find my money reader, so I just use the currency preview mode. Thank you guys for thinking of us and our community!
2018-05-20
Found a huge flaw
I was so excited to find this app for my mother who is completely blind. She uses the voiceover for all functions on her phone. When she went to use the app the voiceover recognized the buttons at the bottom as one large button instead of individuals. This makes it impossible to switch from say short text to product scanner. It’s always stuck on the short text button. It would be an amazing app if this wasn’t an issue. Sadly we’ll have to look for something else until this is fixed.
2018-05-18
Great App! A few difficult issues for the blind
When you open the app if there was a better way to access channels by gesture it would be very beneficial.
My blind friend received notification of software update. App became unusable because she can’t see where to press in the notification box to remove the notification and begin using the app. Either don’t have the notification appear or give a gesture to accept or dismiss the notification to begin using the app.
Pause button too close to channel bar. Accidental press too easy.
This is a wonderful app and amazing technology but there are several improvements that would actually help blind people.
2018-04-19
Most useful app in my phone right now.
I would recommend this app to anyone who is completely blind, or low vision like me. The best parts of this app for me are it’s ability to read short text on the fly, or capture entire documents in just a few seconds. This app rivals paid apps like DigitEyes and KNFBReader. I can’t speak for KNFBReader as I don’t own that app, but SeeingAI, in my experience, detects products just as good or even better than DigitEyes, as for it’s recognition of text on paper or a computer screen, I’ve not had any complaints about it. Things that need improvement are the money reader, scene recognition, and color recognition. Those features are relatively new, so I expect them to improve with updates. The app gets a five star recommendation from me, for anyone with even a slight visual impairment.
2018-02-14
Face recognition
Absolutely love this app! Didn’t even think there was apps out here like this until today when I was on the phone with a friend. She told me that some of her friends use it and I had never heard of it. Only problem I have is with the face recognition… The age it gives you in face descriptions is way off. For example I used a photo of my boyfriend earlier that was in my camera roll and had it describe the photo. It said he was 35 based on facial looks. I might not see very well but I know my boyfriend is only 23 and doesn’t look nowhere near that old… That need some improving other than that the app is amazing! Thank you!
2018-01-29
Wow!
I see so many possibilities for this app. It’s very user friendly. My 5 year old nephew loved the People part and was taking pictures of everyone! When showing it to colleagues, they immediately planned on installing it for their elderly parents. Office Lens is a little more accurate for full document reading, but the short text works great! I often recommend it and use it myself, even though I’m not visually impaired. The development team is amazing and responsive to feedback. Way to go!
2018-01-25
absolutely love this app
as a blind person I cannot begin to tell you how convenient this app makes things from identifying money, getting cooking instructions off of products helping to identify scenes around you, I have even used it during computer issues to diagnose what’s on my screen, it’s very stable which anyone that uses VoiceOver knows that’s saying a lot, LOL definitely a well thought out app never thought I would be able to Denna five photos the way I have even points out famous people if it recognizes them and breeds of animals to try to give you a better description of the photo awesome job thank you very much
2018-01-21
Wreckin’ the Sighted!
I use this app for tons of stuff!
No more KNFB Reader!. It helps me with clothing selection with colors, I spot-check my mail with short text so I don’t have to sit down with Kurzweill until I know it’s not JUNK! I can use Document for obvious stuff, and the Product for re organizing my kitchen cabinet & putting away GROCERIES—It isn’t as up to date as an I.D. Mate, but it isn’t $1200 either!!
I even use it to see if I get the TV on when I get lost in the TV vs. Cable-box or Apple TV fight. I EVEN use it to see if I have any BIOS POST errors, or to see if Windows is UPDATING or such when my PCs take forever to BOOT! Needs some flourishes to be added, and I have a few suggestions, (already sent in!) but I try and get ev’body to think of and find new ways to use this app.
Microsoft— if you need a Rep / Presenter to travel to conventions, Here I Am!
2017-12-21
Great app… Keep up the good work :-)
This app is such a game changer in terms of the high level of quality accessibility that is being offered for free. This is awesome especially for students, who would not be able to afford high-priced apps to do some of these things that Microsoft is offering at no charge. Great job… Two thumbs up! Keep up the great work!
2017-11-26
Beats the pants off KNFB Reader
The OCR on this app is outstanding. Much more accurate than the others I have tried. And so versatile! I had a Pen Friend I was using to label products in the kitchen. Don’t need that anymore. This app not only tells you what the product is from reading the barcode, it can also give you package information such as directions for preparation. Are use it to read signs in the hallways of buildings and on the street. And I can freeze frame text in a video and read that, too. I literally use it every single day. Thank you, Microsoft!
2017-09-24
Extra ordinary!
Remember the days of standalone scanning machines and the minutes we had to wait for each single page of error filled readings. This app is nothing short of miraculous and it's ability to read in real Time with 99% accuracy is nothing short of miraculous. Thank you Microsoft keep up the good work! If you could add Hebrew as a language that would be much appreciated
2017-08-18
now I can read anything
so easy to use!
I've been able to read vending machine info, My t-shirts, train station signs and info, and train numbers on the train as it is pulling into the station.
The app easily reads touch screens and button panels,. There now needs to be a way to match button text with a particular button on the panel. This is easier with a large vending machine, harder with an appliance such as a radio or washing machine.
If someone wears glasses they have to put their picture in twice with and without the glasses.
It would be awesome if the sceens app could report relavent information such as an empty seat, trash can, vending machine, all the things you want to find when using public transportation and facilities.
2017-08-15
Very useful
This app is very useful to help individuals to be independent, In all its features.
I must say the only criticism I can think of at this time is the person recognition option definitely requires more research and development to be more effective in its functions.
It is definitely great and fun during parties, in the way it is at this time.
2017-08-14
Wonderful app:
Hello:
I am a totally blind person who thoroughly enjoys using the Seeing AI app. Just a quick note to let you know that I absolutely love the Seeing AI app. I absolutely love it's many features, and it is truly a life-changing app. I use the short text feature when I want to find out who may have sent me mail, or if I want to find out something about a flyer or something like that. I also really enjoy using the product feature where I can read information about everything from bags of skittles to chips and other things such as canned goods. Your app as all the other readers of it's type completely beaten. Once again, I absolutely love it. Keep up the great work. I'm a fan for life.
2017-08-10
I love this app!
Ever since day one when I downloaded this app, I've known I'd write a review, but kept forgetting. so today when I needed to identify my debit card and used Seeing AI to do just that, I stopped everything to write this review. thank you, Microsoft!
the short text option has been wonderful for quickly sorting unopened mail, and the document reader has been fabulous for reading mail. I've used the app to quickly identify food items and the best part? A cookbook I have that my mom made for me before she died that that other OCR app couldn't read. I can now read my mom's old recipes. Thank you, thank you Microsoft!
2017-08-04
Absolute best OCR app ever.
This app beats the KNFB reader hands down. With KNFB reader you have to constantly be hitting that field of view report button to get the relative position. Seeing AI lets me leave the document I'm scanning in one place while I adjust the camera angle. Once all four corners of the page are in the camera lens, it takes the picture and eliminates guesswork. The text recognition is not perfect, but still much better than any other OCR app I've used.