Some people organize their bookshelves by author name, book title, or even color, but if you take a more chaotic approach and can never seem to find the book you’re looking for, your iPhone’s optical character recognition (OCR) feature can help. Simply snap a photo, wait a few minutes, and then search for the book title in the Photos app. Your phone will point you at the book.
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Reddit user Gtapex pointed this out to me last week and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I tried it out by taking a picture of my bookshelf, waiting a minute for the OCR to finish, and searching for the word “Plato,” purposely choosing one of the physically smaller books on the shelf. The result came up immediately.
I tapped on the photo and sure enough, a yellow marker even appeared indicating exactly where the book was located.
Not bad, especially considering this wasn't a great photo: the angle was awkward and the lighting was bad. I imagine this would be even more useful if I had a much bigger bookshelf.
