Jornal uses Apple Vision to read printed text in nutrition-label, recipe, and medication-package scans. Apple’s available OCR languages vary by device, operating-system version, recognition mode, and Vision revision. Jornal checks the active device instead of relying on a fixed list.
Open the scan-language menu and choose OCR language support to see the current device’s three groups:
Supported directlymeans Apple Vision provides an OCR model for that
language.
Uses fallback OCRmeans Vision does not provide that language directly.
Jornal will try a supported language commonly printed alongside it, or a model with a compatible writing system.
Unavailable on this devicemeans neither the language nor its configured
fallbacks are available on the current device.
Current direct support
With the current accurate Vision recognizer, Jornal has observed direct support for:
- English
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- Spanish
- French
- German
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Swedish
- Simplified Chinese
- Ukrainian
This is a current snapshot, not a permanent Apple platform guarantee. The in-app list is authoritative for the device being used.
Current fallback policy
| Selected language | OCR languages tried when native OCR is unavailable |
|---|---|
| Bulgarian | Russian, Ukrainian, then English |
| Breton | French, then English |
| Catalan | Spanish, French, then English |
| Croatian | Czech, Italian, then English |
| Cornish | English |
| Estonian | Swedish, then English |
| Finnish | Swedish, then English |
| Greek | English |
| Irish | English |
| Scottish Gaelic | English |
| Manx | English |
| Hindi | English |
| Hungarian | Romanian, Czech, then English |
| Icelandic | Norwegian, Danish, then English |
| Latvian | Polish, then English |
| Lithuanian | Polish, then English |
| Slovak | Czech, Polish, then English |
| Slovenian | Italian, Czech, then English |
| Scots | English |
| Welsh | English |
Fallbacks are chosen conservatively. Some reflect languages required or likely to appear alongside the selected language on local packaging. Others provide a compatible alphabet or an English column that may be present on multilingual packaging. A fallback does not make unsupported native-script text supported: for example, English fallback can read an English column on a Greek or Hindi label, but it cannot reliably read Greek or Devanagari text.
Getting the best result
- Select the language printed on the label.
- If Jornal shows a fallback, include any bilingual or multilingual column in
the photo.
- Keep the nutrition table flat, sharp, evenly lit, and large in the frame.
- Review the extracted text and every value before saving.
- If important text was missed, enter or correct it manually.
OCR is a convenience aid and can misread characters, decimal separators, columns, and units. Do not rely on a scan when the exact label wording matters.
Why these regional fallbacks are used
The policy follows current public labelling guidance where it gives a strong signal about another language likely to be present:
requires mandatory information in English, supporting English fallback for Cornish, Scots, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic.
says mandatory prepacked-food information must be written at least in French, supporting French fallback for Breton.
requires mandatory food-labelling particulars at least in Spanish, supporting Spanish fallback for Catalan.
says mandatory labelling is generally provided in Finnish and Swedish, supporting Swedish fallback for Finnish labels.
Apple documents the runtime query through supportedRecognitionLanguages().