Cursive Lens: Old Handwriting
Read Letters, Wills & Census
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Point your phone at a letter, will, or census page from 1892 and read it. Built for genealogists: old cursive, faded ink, and documents that stay on your phone.
Read the letter your great-grandmother wrote in 1892 — today, on your phone.
CursiveLens is built for one job: turning old handwriting into text you can actually read. Not the notes you wrote yesterday. Other people's handwriting, and the older the better — faded ink, looping copperplate, secretary hand, and letters crossed sideways over themselves to save paper.
WHAT ONE PHOTO GIVES YOU
• A faithful transcript that keeps the original line breaks and marks anything genuinely unreadable as [illegible]
• A plain-English summary, so you know what a document says before you work through every word
• The people, places, and dates it mentions, pulled out and tagged
BUILT FOR OLD DOCUMENTS, NOT FOR NOTES
Most handwriting apps exist to digitize the notes you took this morning, and they fall apart on a 19th-century will. CursiveLens lets you say what you are looking at — letter, will, deed, census return, diary page — and roughly when it was written and in what language. That context is what lets it read historical cursive instead of guessing at it.
CAPTURE WHOLE DOCUMENTS
• Use the built-in document scanner, import from your photo library, or open a PDF
• A four-page letter stays one document, not four loose photos
• Works on originals, archive photocopies, microfilm printouts, and screenshots from research sites
YOU ARE THE FINAL AUTHORITY
Your image and its transcript sit side by side. Pinch to zoom into the word that is giving you trouble, correct the text yourself, and your correction is what gets saved. Re-transcribe any page with a different hint whenever you want.
AN ARCHIVE THAT STAYS FINDABLE
Every document lands in a searchable library with a title, a date, and the names it mentions. Search every transcript at once for a surname, a farm, a ship, or a regiment — the line you half-remember reading is one tap away.
SHARE THE FIND
Export a transcript as plain text, or as a PDF with the original image and the transcription side by side — ready to send to a cousin, attach to a research log, or file with a tree.
WHO IT IS FOR
Genealogists and family historians. Anyone who has inherited a shoebox of letters nobody can read. Local historians, archivists, students working from primary sources, and everyone who has ever squinted at a census page and given up.
PRIVATE BY DESIGN
Your documents and transcripts live on your phone. There is no account, no sign-up, and no cloud archive. A page is sent for transcription only in the moment you ask for one, and it is never stored on a server afterwards.
FREE TO TRY, THEN PRO
Your first three documents are free — enough to prove it on your own family papers. CursiveLens Pro unlocks unlimited transcriptions, an unlimited library, and PDF export.
Pro is an auto-renewing subscription: an annual plan that opens with a 7-day free trial, or a monthly plan if you would rather not commit to a year. Prices are shown in your own currency before you buy. A subscription renews automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period; manage or cancel it any time in your App Store account settings. Any unused part of a free trial is forfeited when you buy a subscription.
CursiveLens is made by Adelyons Software LLC.
Questions, or a document it struggled with? Email dev@adelyons.com.
Terms of Use (EULA): https://adelyons.com/apps/cursivelens/eula.html
Privacy Policy: https://adelyons.com/apps/cursivelens/privacy.html
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The developer, Adelyons Software LLC, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Purchases
- User Content
- Identifiers
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Adelyons Software LLC
- Size
- 38 MB
- Category
- Reference
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 15.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 15.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 15.0 or later. - iPod touch
Requires iOS 15.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 12.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- CursiveLens Pro (Monthly) $6.99
- CursiveLens Pro (Annual) $29.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Adelyons Software LLC