Cursive Lens: Old Handwriting
Cursive to text translator
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Now reads census pages as rows you can export as CSV, and knows Kurrent, Sütterlin and secretary hand. Old letters, wills and records, typed out 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
OLD GERMAN HANDWRITING, SECRETARY HAND, COPPERPLATE
Kurrent and Sütterlin (old German handwriting), English secretary hand, copperplate and Spencerian each have letters that look nothing like their modern selves. The built-in script reference draws every alphabet and names the letters that fool modern readers: the Kurrent e that looks like an n, the secretary r shaped like a 2, the long s. Set the language and era, and Cursive Lens reads Kurrent and Sütterlin to text for you.
CENSUS PAGES COME BACK AS ROWS
Pick the record form (any US census from 1850 to 1950, a ship passenger manifest, or a baptism, marriage or burial register) and every line of the page comes back as a row with that form's own columns: name, age, relationship, birthplace and the rest, ditto marks expanded. Export the rows as CSV for a spreadsheet or your family-tree program, beside the verbatim transcript you check against the ink.
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.
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
Ratings & Reviews
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New: record forms. Choose a US census year (1850 to 1950), a passenger manifest or a parish register, and every line of the page comes back as a row you can export as CSV.
New: an old-script reference in Settings, with the Kurrent, Sütterlin, secretary hand, copperplate and Spencerian alphabets and the letters that trip modern readers.
PDF export works on every transcript again. Some documents, ones with an old-style long s, raised abbreviations, or accented and foreign names, could not be saved as a PDF and showed "That could not be shared." They export now, page photos and all.
Sharing works again on the newest iPhone software, where every share, as text, CSV or PDF, could stop with "That could not be shared." The share sheet now opens from the Share button as it should.
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
- 41.9 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 (Annual) $29.99
- CursiveLens Pro (Monthly) $6.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Adelyons Software LLC