Name: Seeing AI
Rating: 4.35957 (559 reviews)

User Reviews for Seeing AI

4.36 out of 5

559 Ratings

3 years ago, lodu9020

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

3 years ago, Big dady b

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

7 months ago, The stuff you should listen to

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

3 months ago, James KC3CDV

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.

6 years ago, Lucky 10382

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.

3 years ago, sinned.

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.

7 years ago, Blind Alley Cat

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!

6 years ago, mb0392

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.

6 months ago, minnie313

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.

6 years ago, Katie_1998

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!

5 years ago, Kball977

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!!!!

7 years ago, Afternoon Jock

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.

2 years ago, blind-mountaineer

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.

7 years ago, BlindDude

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

7 years ago, Raynaadi

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!

3 years ago, IkariWarrior007

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 :-)

1 year ago, Cblackstone

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.

5 years ago, Alexa Alexa Alexa integration

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

3 years ago, Jake 49

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

7 years ago, BooterBH

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!

4 years ago, DixieWytch

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!

5 years ago, dee cussa

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.

4 years ago, Icicle Salad

A very powerful tool

I can scan my mail and identify money with this easily, which makes it a cut above the rest of these sorts of apps. It's sometimes not the best for reading a very long document, but I can at least tell if my mail is junk or if I need to hold onto it. Moreover, the barcode reader is a nice touch. Its not the fastest thing ever to find that pesky UPC but you can do it. Overall this is highly recommended for most quick OCR and scanning uses. Download it and give it a whirl, I think you'll be impressed!

4 years ago, 74738291727484039171749

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!

6 years ago, Jean R

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?

4 months ago, Fam man 11

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!

6 years ago, Filibuster3

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!

11 months ago, Racingcr1

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.

3 years ago, crazy crazy crazy 543to1

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.

5 years ago, Themusicman08

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.

7 years ago, SoundMan87

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.

3 years ago, ☺️💙💖

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!

6 years ago, Hilary Reed

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.

5 years ago, Carter WuWuWu

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 .

7 years ago, ,happy ,mom

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.

7 years ago, Chaviv1

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

4 years ago, pianogeek0000

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.

6 years ago, craftygrl25

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.

10 months ago, Keisha612

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.

11 months ago, rusty Perez

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!

6 years ago, MINI me V2

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

5 years ago, sig_23

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 “.

6 years ago, RR3121

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.

6 years ago, Little Blind Girl

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!

7 years ago, GianniP46

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!

3 months ago, Desmond Dennis fan

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.

7 years ago, Terrance Brennan

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.

1 year ago, Col. Frank Slade

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?

5 years ago, 123___tony

Good but sometimes glitchy

I like the over all use of the app, but I've been having some trouble with the app lately. When I'm using the seen preview I try to take a second picture and for some reason it says that there is a problem and to try again in a moment but next time I try it stops working all of the sudden and it won't say anything when I go to the other channels.

5 years ago, Saphire'sSanctuary

Great app but i'm having issues with it

This app is great and I use it on a daily bases. I've been having some issues with it though, lately the "Recognize with Seeing Ai" function in the photos app won't load. It stays on the loading page and won't load the description at all. How can I fix this issue? I've already tried to delete the app and downloaded it again but the problem persists.

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: • Short Text - Speaks text as soon as it appears in front of the camera. • Documents - Provides audio guidance to capture a printed page, and recognizes the text, along with its original formatting. • Products - Scans barcodes, using audio beeps to guide you; hear the name, and package information when available. • People - Saves people’s faces so you can recognize them, and get an estimate of their age, gender, and expression. • Currency - Recognizes currency notes. • Scenes - Hear an overall description of the scene captured. Explore the photo by moving your finger over the screen to hear the location of different objects. • 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+). • Indoor Navigation - Available on the World Channel, enables you to create routes through a building, like "entrance to classroom", and navigate by following the sound (requires a device with an A9 or later processor, and iOS 14+). • Colors - Identifies colors. • Handwriting - Reads handwritten text like in greeting cards (available in a subset of languages). • Light - Generates an audible tone corresponding to the brightness in the surroundings. • Images in other apps - Just tap “Share” and “Recognize with Seeing AI” to describe images from Mail, Photos, Twitter, and more. • Browse Photos - Hear descriptions of photos saved on your device. Seeing AI continues to evolve as we hear from the community, and AI research advances. Check out tutorials with this YouTube playlist: http://aka.ms/SeeingAIPlaylist. Questions, feedback or feature requests? Email us at [email protected].