Be My Eyes just released an app for Windows. It is available in the Microsoft Store. It will let you describe your screen, the image in your camera, in a file or in the clipboard. It is very bare-bones in terms of settings, strictly speaking there are no settings, you can't even change language as of yet. The app seems to work fine otherwise, it delivers descriptions with about the same speed as the iOS app, maybe even a bit faster.
By blindpk, 21 May, 2024
Forum
Windows
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It's interesting.
It manages to describe scenes but you need to tell it to out all the fluf or it will tell you, this is a scene from x game on youtube, the scene depicts, y, and will go on for a while.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when they add vision and all that to the app. Part of me really wants it, it'll be fasinating to listen to let's plays with a describer describing the scene but they won't be trained so it will be janky.
It can't click on things yet but if this ever gets that ability, it'll be amazing!
Huh?
Your title doesn't make sense to me.
Apple sign-in not available on Windows
I don't know if this matters that much but I sign in with my Apple account on my iPhone but will have to either sign up with Google or create an entirely new account with my e-mail address.
Can it also call volunteers,…
Can it also call volunteers, either regular or from the directory? I could see that being helpful.
No.
You can't call volunteeers yet,, you can just describe your computer screen and pictures.
ok...
So the be my eyes app said this and now it's gone,, got it.
Well I assume the AI feature is still there, they're adding new things like that directory so I think you might need to get used to a new tab. I hardly use the app so it doesn't bother me.
Who else would like this…
Who else would like this brought to macOS? I know for me, there are situations where I encounter a picture on my Mac and want it described with Be My Eyes, but don't want to have to first share it to my phone.
Mac App
As a mac user, I would like to use Be My Eyes on mac. Ä°t would be great. I'm thinking about writing an e-mail to Be My Eyes team after I tested the windows app myself.
I'd imagine...
If this was more akin to the iOS app, it would be incredibly beneficial on any operating system. 😊
Very Cool
So glad this app is being made available on additional platforms. I, too, would eventually like to see a Mac version. But for now I'm just glad to have such a robust app on my phone. I love the descriptions it gives, even when they're not quite what I'm expecting.
Thanks for letting me know…
Thanks for letting me know about the Sign In with Apple feature.
I'm in the same situation as you.
I'm hesitant to create another account solely for using this on Windows.
I'll hold off and see if they incorporate that option.
It's likely just an oversight; many other apps offer it, after all.
Absolutely enjoying BME (iOS edition)
The iOS app is one of those things that I do not know how I ever functioned without. Perfect example, was using it to check packages in my fridge the other day for expiration dates.
It is a small thing, and yet, was nice to be able to do it on my own, that is to say without human sighted assistance. 😇
While I would never use a PC or Mac version for that particular task, the ability to use the web cam to take photos of things to be described would be wonderful. 😀
Love it
I love how speedy it is. And how quickly I can ask follow-up questions
It works great but we're only at the beginning
I did some testing with the software in question and frankly it's a charme.
They will certainly have to add some options, especially maintaining the user's language, as for now he only speaks in English and you have to request a translation every time. Then, the app should remain in the system tray, not in the foreground or among the apps reachable with alt-tab.
Anyway, I managed to solve some captchas! "which of these images is a fish"?
He suggested the first and fourth and he was correct.
Too beautiful.
It really is.
I was able to check out videos of Lego Harry Potter, years 1 to 4, and a scene from the last of us 2, it won't get frame by frame, yet, but it will soon and the video function is going to be amazing!
Oddly Labeled Buttons
So after hearing about the Be My Eyes Windows app, I downloaded and find it rather useful. Certain functions, like describing a image is a little longer process then it is using the PictureSmart AI with JAWS, but it works well enough.
The only thing I noticed though is that the buttons to describe your screen and what's on the clipboard have the word "undefined" as part of the button's label. They may want to change the label a bit and possibly remove the word "Shortcut", but for the most part, it's a pretty nice app to have in one's toolbelt.
Well this sucks, I thought…
Well this sucks, I thought if you could use the email address Apple gives you when signing in with apple, it would be a work around, but it doesn't even do that.
It says User was created via Apple. Please login via Apple.
I'm not making another account just to log into this thing on windows.
If I can log into chat gpt and perplexity on windows through Apple, then I should be able to also do it with this, but they haven't given us that option.
No matter, I can wait.
apple sign in.
You could write to them if you like.
contacted be my eyes
I sent them an email, we'll see what happens.
Hopefully it was just an oversight at their end, so we shall see if they'll do anything about it.
Loving it!
I got so excited that the first thing I did when I saw this was to get it and it absolutely rocks.
Sign in with Apple.
Just wanted to let everyone know this is on the way in the near future. There are lots of other new features on the way too but this is close to the top of the list.
Awesome.
I don't really use the app but the windows version is great for me.
Upcoming features
I hope one of the upcoming features is the ability to prompt when sending the first image. I think it could be easily done, place an input field in the main dialog, if there is text in it, send it along with the image. This is a feature that almost all of the alternatives lack.
Adding multiple pictures could also be nice.
Apple Sign-In Unavailable on Windows
Wrote the developers about that but no response so far.
Right Click and describe
Can one just right click the image and say describe with Be My Eyes? I get so many images on What's app. which is configured on my desktop and I can't read the images on the application there. I need to open the image on my phone then say Share and then Describe with Be My Eyes
Not yet.
Write to them and see what happens.
be my eyes and jaws picture smart AI
Is there any benefit for using be my eyes over jaw's new picture smart AI?
Re: Michael
No I wouldn't say so. Maybe if you have a camera in/connected to your computer, because I don't know if you can describe a picture directly from that with PictureSmart, otherwise PictureSmart can do more things than Be My Eyes at the moment. It is unclear if either program uses the new GPT-4o model (not the real-time thing, the improved image descriptions that launched last week), if either did that could be a factor, but neither company has said anything about it.
Bug with some files
I've encountered a bug where it says that some files are not supported when I use the "File explorer" method. It is not a file format problem, I've tried with both JPG and PNG and I get the same error. Maybe it has something to do with the dimensions or some other property of the image. I've sent a bug report to Be My Eyes about it.
Update: It had to do with dimensions. I bit of trial and error changing the dimensions in Paint made it work. The original image was 1376*921, I set it to 1400*1000 and it worked.
The original image work fine in PictureSmart btw.
Bonus for NVDA users
Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but there is a nice add-on for NVDA called "Cloudvision". It does image recognition for images on the web, as well as images you have on your computer. The cool thing, is that in the latest release it utilizes Be my AI.
Cheers. 😀
That's nice.
I tried it and honestly I find BeMyEyes to be faster.
Probably so...
It suits my needs though. 🤷
Re: Sign in with Apple
Sign in with Apple is now available, yay!
Although, I'm not sure how much I'll use this, probably for the gifs people keep replying with on Discord, that's if it even works with that.
At least I can now use it without having to create a whole new account.
comparing Be My Eyes to Picture Smart
Hi,
I find Be My Eyes a lot faster than Picture Smart with JAWS. Really liking this app. I managed to get it to describe a scene in Minecraft.
It really is a neat little app.
I don't need it that often but when I do it's great!
I'm a bit confused though, what does the clipboard function do?
Clipboard function
The clipboard function describes an image you have copied to the clipboard, e.g. from a web browser.
Ah ok.
I don't think I'd use that but it's good to know.
Clipboard Description
It'd be great if this worked for photos copied to the Windows File Explorer clipboard as well.
Copy describtion?
I tried copying a describtion since it was some text which I needed to get edited. And surprise! I cannot. Is it just me?
virtual review for NVDA
Hi Gokul,
If you're using NVDA, the virtual review add-on will copy the text from the entire window you're working in.
https://github.com/ruifontes/virtualReview
This is available in the NVDA add-on store too.
Press NVDA + CTRL + W. It'll beep at you, then in a couple of seconds all the text from the Be My Eyes window is displayed including all the image description and the Be My Eyes menu. You can navigate the text box and copy things from there. I think JAWS has a similar function with the virtual buffer thing. I haven't used JAWS properly for years so can't really remember much about it.
Be My Eyes and Picture smart
For me, not everyone has the money to buy JAWS. So, a free alternative is always a good option.
JAWS virtualise window
Tried the virtualise window thing with JAWS but it didn't work.
copying description text with jaws
When I use picture smart with jaws, I am able to copy text no problem. What I do is select ask a question then there, you are able to copy the text.
Under jaws help with picture smart, it explains this.
Picture Smart
Hi,
And with picture smart, you can usually ask it to tell you all the content on a page of a scanned PDF document for example. I've only got a message about copyright restrictions once. Picture Smart doesn't seem to like telling you all the content on a webpage though. GPT has issues with this in general. Picture Smart is a lot slower than Be My Eyes. I prefer Be My Eyes for Windows now.
Michael
Agree. Also with picture smart, it uses 2 AI.
anyone know when we will see a beta of gpt 4o on be my eyes
subject
be my eyes for windows
My major use case for picture smart is having it describe youtube videos as I'm watching them.
Is there a way to get be my eyes do this, or does one have to be in the be my eyes app?
Does anyone remember...?
A poster named Lottie? She used to post here all the time.
Then one day she learned about YouTube video descriptions via Jaws.
...and was never heard from again.
😃 😃 😃
Describing YouTube videos with JAWS
I'm pretty sure that JAWS (through picture Smart AI) can only describe individual frames of a video, so it's not video description, but just a modified version of image description, which isn't that exciting (something I wouldn't have said even a year ago). But if I'm wrong, people can correct me.
you're right TJT
I just tried this myself, and I was just about to report the same thing when you beat me to it. I checked for any JAWS updates just in case there's a new amazing feature but no. JAWS and Picture Smart does what Be My Eyes does, takes a picture of whatever is happening on the screen at the time, so a still image and describes it. It's not a continuous description of the entire video. Be My Eyes processes the image faster anyway. But still impressive though. I've often wanted to know what visual aids are used to supplement videos, and now I know. At least I can get a description for a certain point in a video.