SwipeScan
iOS · Android · free to install

Pull the exact number
off any screen.

The SwipeScan app reads a number off your camera with one finger swipe. The free tools on this site go one step further: where a number carries a check digit, they recompute it and tell you whether it was read correctly.

One wrong digit in a nineteen-character string is not a typo. It is a different number entirely, and no spell-checker will ever catch it. That is the problem this solves.

Try it here first, no install

Phone numbers · account numbers · tracking · serials · IMEI · VIN · IBAN · meters

SwipeScan on iPhone: the phone number from a photographed business card recognised and shown in a Copied to clipboard bar.

Screen to clipboard in three moves

The app’s own screens, unretouched. The captions describe what each one actually shows.

SwipeScan on iPhone: a photographed business card with a finger dragging a highlighter stroke along the email address line, which appears recognised in a bar at the bottom.
1 Swipe along the line Drag a finger over the line you want, the way a highlighter works. The example here is the email address on a business card — a phone number, a serial or a meter reading is the same gesture.
The recognised phone number pasted into the iPhone dialler above the keypad, with a Paste button visible.
2 Paste it where it belongs It is already in the clipboard by the time you leave the app. Here it lands in the dialler; a spreadsheet, a bank form or a tracking page works the same.
An address recognised in SwipeScan and pasted into the Google Maps search field, with the location shown on the map below.
3 Or send it somewhere else The share sheet passes the text to anything that accepts it. This one is an address going into Maps.

Try it without installing anything

Drop in a screenshot with numbers in it. Same idea as the app, running in this tab, minus the camera.

Extract the numbers from an image Runs in your browser

Why a check digit matters

Reading it is easy. Knowing you read it right is not.

Text has redundancy — an engine that sees app1e can correct it to apple. Digits have none, so there is nothing to correct toward. Whole-string accuracy is (1 − CER)N, and it falls off a cliff:

A checksum does not make that 86% better. It makes the missing 14% visible instead of silent. The full explanation is here.

Has a check digit

We recompute it. Fails, and you know a character was misread before you use the number.

IMEI · Luhn
VIN · mod-11
IBAN · mod-97

No check digit

Nothing can verify these. We show what we read and say plainly that we cannot confirm it.

Meter readings
Serial numbers
MAC addresses

Your phone may already do it

For a paragraph of ordinary text, iOS Live Text and Google Lens are free, built in and very good. Use them. Come back when it is a long run of digits on a bad surface.

All the tools

Numbers only

Strip everything that is not a digit.

Screenshot to text

The whole capture, as plain text.

Copy-blocked text

When selection is disabled, the screenshot still reads.

IMEI Luhn ✓

Fifteen digits, verified against their own check digit.

VIN mod-11 ✓

Seventeen characters, the ninth checks the rest.

IBAN mod-97 ✓

Validated the way your bank validates it.

Utility meter

Seven-segment and dial faces, where Live Text struggles.

Compare the apps

What is actually on the App Store, with the real numbers.

The app does the part a web page cannot

The picker above already offers your camera, so the honest difference is narrower: the app lets you swipe a region on the shot it just took, keeps a paid history, works offline, and skips the 7 MB engine download every browser visit needs. Checksum verification lives here on the site, not in the app.

App Store Google Play