Text Fairy (OCR Text Scanner) - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Yes, I was working as a Java backend developer but started TextFairy to teach myself Android App development.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

Integrating C++ Code for Image processing and OCR and learning computer vision algorithms from scratch.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

Spotify: Because it’s a daily companion in my life.

How long have you been working on this app?

I started in 2012 but only published the first version in 2014. I have been working on this app on and off, taking breaks when my daughters were born.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

I wanted to provide a free and open-source app for recognizing text on images because I wanted to build something that others can expand on and that is accessible to all users, even if they have no money to spend.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

TextFairy is free and runs completely offline on the phone, meaning all user data is always kept private. It is also important to me that all features of the app are accessible even if you don't pay for the pro version. Textfairy has many features but what stands out the most to me are:

- supports more than 100 different languages for text recognition
- can automatically detect and crop paper/letters
- has text to speech to read the recognized text out aloud

The feature that I'm most proud of and that was the hardest to implement is automatic paper detection. I worked the nights for ~3Months, while my kids were sleeping to implement and fine-tune the algorithm.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

I will improve the text recognition accuracy. There have been great advances in machine learning in the past few years and I can start to take advantage of that. Also, I would like to add the option to scan multiple images or multi-page pdf files in a batch.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

I'm happy that you are using my app and I'm grateful for feedback.