How Helperbird Reads Equations from a Screenshot
Learn how the Helperbird Screenshot Reader picks up maths from a picture automatically, with no mode to choose, and what to do with the result.
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- features
- maths
There is No Maths Mode
If you have used Helperbird before, you may remember choosing between reading text and reading maths. That choice is gone, and you do not need it.
The Screenshot Reader now works out for itself what it is looking at. Capture a page that is all words and you get the words. Capture a page with equations in it and you get the equations, properly formed. Capture a page with both and you get both, in the order they appear.
There is nothing to switch on.
Who is This For?
This is helpful for:
- Students working from a scanned worksheet or a photographed textbook page
- Anyone who needs an equation out of a PDF that will not let them select it
- People who want maths read aloud rather than puzzled over
- Anyone whose course materials arrive as pictures
Step 1: Start a Capture
Open Helperbird, go to All Features, open Screenshot Reader and press Start.
Step 2: Draw a Box Around the Maths
Drag a box around the part of the page you want. You can include the surrounding words. You do not need to isolate the equations.
Step 3: Use What Comes Back
What happens next depends on where you have told the Screenshot Reader to send things. With Explain mode on, you get the maths described in plain language, which is often what you actually want with a formula.
With Explain mode off, the maths goes to whichever single destination you picked: Immersive Reader, your clipboard, a note, or read aloud.
If the Maths Comes Back Wrong
- Capture a bigger area. Cutting through the middle of a fraction or a root gives it less to work with.
- Check the picture is sharp. A blurry photo of a whiteboard is hard for anyone to read.
- Try one equation at a time if a dense page comes back muddled.
- Multi-row layouts, such as matrices or aligned systems, can display with their rows overlapping when opened in Immersive Reader. That is a limitation of the reader rather than of the capture, so try another destination if a matrix looks wrong.
See also how to use the Screenshot Reader and the Equation Editor if you want to write maths rather than capture it.
Video Tutorial
Coming soon
Need Additional Help?
If you have any questions or run into any issues, please contact the Helperbird support team. You can reach us at Helperbird support. We are happy to help you get the most out of Helperbird.
