The remarkable 2 handwriting conversion tool is one of the best features of this focus inspiring device. But it can also be a frustrating experience if the algorithm doesn’t pick up your handwriting properly. After a good amount of research, we’re happy to present some solutions and tricks to maximizing your reMarkable 2 paper tablet’s handwriting conversion feature.
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What is reMarkable handwriting conversion?
Simply, the reMarkable 2 paper tablet can convert handwritten notes to typed text through it’s Connect platform. The user selects the handwritten note for conversion, sends it to the cloud, and then reMarkable adds a page in the notebook with the types text. This occurs through a software process called OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
While OCR isn’t specific to the reMarkable tablet or platform, it’s integration into the device is quite well done. Once you’ve finished hand writing a note, you select that page for conversion and send it to reMarkable’s backend. In just a couple seconds, you’ll have a 90% solution on your text. Note, you need to be connected to the internet / wifi to make this happen. For detailed instructions on handwriting conversion, click here, and for a better description on how to connect your reMarkable to the internet, try this article.
What are common problems with reMarkable 2 handwriting conversion?
In our testing, the two biggest problems for handwriting conversion come down to two general categories – formatting and character recognition
Formatting – your text should be linear (straight down the page) without using multiple columns or extraneous text
Character recognition – Bad handwriting can be a killer, but I honestly have poor penmanship and it works quite well. You need to make sure that your words are properly spaced and that the language on your Connect account is set (one of the 30 available).
Best practices for reMarkable 2 to solve conversion problems
There are a couple of key practices that can help your reMarkable convert your handwriting into better looking and more effective text:
- Underline to make converted text bold
- Use bullets to organize (they convert well)
- Put enough space between words for the conversion software to differentiate
- Use the right symbols (+ @ , . /) to liven up your text
Below are a examples of improving a reMarkable note to improve Connect’s ability to convert it to text.
The above note isn’t linear, uses a symbol (the arrow), and has some poor spacing. All of these problems result in a poor conversion that is difficult to follow.
By implementing best practices for reMarkable handwriting conversion, we can eliminate many of the problems with handwriting conversation.
The above example has been improved and you can see the better conversion results. By implementing these reMarkable handwriting best practices, the converted text is essentially ready to share with team members with very little editing.
