Family letters
Read old family letters
Upload a photo of a letter and get text you can read and share.
Drop pages or folders here
Upload up to 10 pages in one document with your free allowance. Folders and large collections open the batch organizer.
4.6 out of 5 on Google Play.
135 ratings · 32 written reviews · Play snapshot checked 30 August 2026
Nearly 99,000 completed production OCR pages · Production sessions recorded across 144 countries · Usage snapshot October 1, 2026. How these figures are counted
Old letters your family can finally read.
Take a photo of a page, check the text against it, and save a file you can email or print. Your page stays on screen the whole time.
Letters and postcards
Wartime letters, letters from relatives who moved abroad, and postcards with small writing.
Diaries and recipe books
Journals, household books and handwritten recipes passed down in the family.
Certificates and records
Birth, marriage and service records you collect while building a family tree.
OCR that ends in a document.
The original stays visible while you review the result. Nothing is hidden behind a download until you know the page was understood.
| Capability | Inksight | Basic OCR |
|---|---|---|
| Faded writing | Read from your photo as it is | Often needs photo editing first |
| Old handwriting | Cursive from the 1800s on | Made for printed text |
| Sharing | A Word or PDF file you can send | Plain text |
| The original | Shown next to every line while you check | Put aside after the scan |
Handwriting recognition across 50+ languages.
Scan Latin-script notes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and more, as well as Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other supported scripts. Language is detected from the page—there is no selector to configure first.
Recognition quality varies with handwriting, image clarity, page angle, and document structure. Review important names and numbers before using an export.
Before you scan a page.
How do I turn old family letters into text?
Photograph each page flat and in even light, upload them as one document, and check the text against the photo. Then save a Word or PDF file to share.
Do I need a scanner?
No. A phone photo works, as long as the light is even and the whole page is in the picture. Avoid hard shadows and steep angles.
Does it read letters in other languages?
More than 50 languages are supported, including German, Polish, Italian, Spanish and the Nordic languages that turn up in letters from relatives abroad. It reads the writing; it does not translate it.
What if part of a letter cannot be read?
A hard passage usually comes back wrong rather than empty, so read the text against your photo. Names, places and dates need the closest look.
Can I keep a whole set of letters in one file?
Yes. Add each page to the same document, put them in date order, and save them as one file.
Is it free?
Your first ten pages on the web are free, exports included. After that Inksight still reads the page and shows you a locked preview, so you can see the result before you pick a plan.
Other ways to use Inksight.
Every tool uses the same OCR and the same document library, so a page you scan here opens anywhere else you sign in.
Also worth a look: how Inksight compares with other OCR models, pricing and the Android app.