I’m working on building an Android application that needs optical character recognition capabilities. The main goal is to create a scanner that can extract text from business cards and various types of documents.
I’ve been looking into different OCR solutions and wondering if Google Docs API would be a good fit for this project. Has anyone successfully integrated Google Docs API for text recognition in their Android apps? What would be the best approach to set this up?
I’m particularly interested in understanding the implementation process and whether there are any limitations I should be aware of when using this API for document scanning purposes.
I tried Google Docs API for OCR last year and it was a mess. The API wasn’t built for OCR - it’s meant for creating and editing docs. You have to upload images as documents first, which adds pointless overhead and complexity. Plus the accuracy sucked, especially with business cards that have weird layouts and fonts. I switched to Google ML Kit’s Text Recognition API instead. It’s actually designed for mobile OCR, works offline, and has way better accuracy for scanning documents. Integration with Android apps is smooth too - no weird document conversion hoops to jump through. For business cards specifically, ML Kit handles different text angles and font sizes much better than forcing Docs API to do something it wasn’t meant for.
Don’t go with Google Docs API for OCR - it’s a nightmare. You’ll waste time converting images to document format, and the text extraction is terrible. I built something similar two years back and had to scrap the whole thing because it couldn’t handle complex layouts properly. Google Cloud Vision API is way better. It nails different document types, including business cards, with much better accuracy. Plus it’s faster since you skip the conversion step entirely. For business cards specifically, Vision API handles rotated text and weird fonts really well - stuff that trips up other solutions.
i agree, Google Docs API is not the best for OCR. try Firebase ML Kit or Cloud Vision API instead, they’re made for that stuff. Docs API just complicates things and is slower. Vision API is way better for biz cards and actual documents.