How to Split a Bill From a Receipt Photo (iOS 27 and Any iPhone)

iOS 27 was released on 14 September, and one of the features getting the most attention is also one of the most restricted. Point your camera at a restaurant bill, pick out what you ate, and your iPhone works out your share and sends the money through Apple Cash.

It’s a good idea. It is also US-only, needs Siri AI switched on, and needs an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. If you’re reading the headline in London, Toronto or Baku, or on an iPhone 14, you can’t use it.

So this covers both halves: how the new feature works for the people who have it, and how everyone else can split a bill from a receipt photo.

For everyone else, the slow part is getting the items and prices off the paper. Textora reads a receipt’s line items into a table you can export as CSV or paste straight into Numbers, with each price next to its item. It doesn’t split the bill or send money itself, but once the items are in a table, the split is a few formulas. It works on any iPhone on iOS 16 or later, in the EU too.

What Apple actually shipped

Apple announced it in June. The newsroom post says “users can split bills using Apple Cash and Apple Intelligence, making it easy to settle up after meals with friends,” and that you can “scan a receipt with their iPhone camera, or use a photo of a bill.”

The useful detail is in how it divides the money. Per Apple, as people select their items, each person’s “total payment is calculated, including their share of tax and tip.” That’s the proportional split explained further down, done for you.

Apple lists three places the feature lives: Messages, Wallet, and Visual Intelligence, either onscreen or through the camera.

How to use it (if you can)

Apple’s support page for Siri mode in Camera gives these steps:

1. Turn on Siri AI, which is still labelled beta.
2. Click and hold the Camera Control, on models that have one, or use one of Apple’s alternate ways to open it.
3. Tap Siri to switch to Siri mode.
4. Point the camera at the check.
5. Tap Split Bill with Apple Cash when it appears, then follow the onscreen instructions.

That’s as far as Apple’s documentation goes. What happens after step 5 (choosing contacts, confirming items) is described as “onscreen instructions,” and I’d rather not invent the screens.

Engadget’s walkthrough adds one piece of sensible advice: review the items and amounts before you send the requests. The camera is reading a crumpled thermal printout in restaurant lighting. Check the shared starter and any discount lines before anyone gets charged.

Who can’t use it

Here’s the fine print, all from Apple’s own pages. MacRumors’ iOS 27 guide also lists bill splitting as U.S. only.

The Apple Cash row is easy to miss, and it matters for the whole table, not just you. Apple’s send and receive guide says that if someone sends you money and you haven’t set up Apple Cash, tapping Accept prompts you to set it up. For a friend visiting from abroad, that’s where it stops. Your friend on Android can’t take part either.

I covered the EU side of this when Apple first announced it, in what Siri AI’s EU delay actually removes. Siri mode in Camera was on that list.

Split it on any iPhone: receipt to table

This works without Apple Intelligence, Siri AI or Apple Cash, so it works outside the US and on iPhones that don’t get Siri AI.

1. Photograph the receipt. Flat on the table, straight on, the whole thing in frame. Long receipts are fine in two shots.

2. Get the line items into a table. Scan the receipt with Textora, or import the photo you just took. It reads the items and prices and lays them out as a table. Export it as CSV or copy it into Numbers. Check the rows against the paper, especially discounts and anything the printer smudged.

3. Mark who had what. Add a column and put each person’s initials next to their items. For a shared plate, split the price across the people who ate it first (more on that below).

4. Do the arithmetic. In Numbers, a SUMIF formula per person adds up their items, and one cell holds the multiplier from the worked example below. Multiply each person’s total by it.

5. Send the amounts with whatever payment app your group already uses.

Without Textora: Live Text and Notes. Live Text is built into iOS and works too, with more tidying. Open the photo, tap the Live Text button, touch and hold the text, drag the grab points over the items and prices, and tap Copy Text. Apple’s Live Text guide covers this, and I’ve written up the other ways to copy text from an image if the button doesn’t appear. Receipts are laid out in columns, so item names and prices may paste as two separate lists rather than side by side; match them up in Notes and check them against the paper. Then let Notes do the arithmetic. Apple’s Notes math guide says expressions are “solved inline when you write or type an equal sign.” Work out the multiplier once (the worked example below explains it), then type one line per person:

154.20 / 120 =
50 * 1.285 =
40 * 1.285 =

The same page says you can “assign variables,” but it doesn’t show the syntax, so I haven’t relied on it here.

One limit with the Live Text route: Apple’s guide notes that Live Text “isn’t available in all regions or languages,” so check it works on receipts in your language before you’re at the table.

How to split tax and tip proportionally

Splitting evenly is fine until one person had a salad and another had the steak and two cocktails. The fair version works like this: everyone pays tax and tip in proportion to what they ordered.

Here’s an example with made-up numbers.

Step 1: find the multiplier. Divide the total by the subtotal: 154.20 ÷ 120 = 1.285. Everyone pays 28.5% on top of their own items.

Step 2: multiply each person’s items by it.

• Ana: 50 × 1.285 = $64.25
• Ben: 40 × 1.285 = $51.40
• Cara: 30 × 1.285 = $38.55

Step 3: check it adds up. 64.25 + 51.40 + 38.55 = $154.20. It does, which is the point of doing it this way. Nobody has to cover a leftover dollar.

A few edge cases:

• Shared plates: divide the item evenly among the people who ate it before multiplying. A $12 starter for three adds $4 to each of those three.
• Tip on the pre-tax or post-tax amount: doesn’t change the method. Whatever the final total is, the multiplier absorbs it.
• Service charge already on the bill: it’s already in the total, so don’t add a tip on top unless you mean to.
• Rounding: with awkward totals the shares can be a cent out. Give the odd cent to whoever paid.

Bill-splitting apps with receipt scanning

Some split apps read receipts too. These are the facts from their own site or App Store page.

Splitwise. The site says it’s “free for iPhone, Android, and web,” and its Pro page lists receipt scanning (“just take a picture of your receipt”) and itemization (“Splitwise will detect the individual items so that you can assign them to your friends”). Both are Pro features, not free ones. It’s built around ongoing shared expenses between a group.

Tab. The App Store listing says you take a picture of an itemized receipt, Tab “automatically detects all the items and prices,” and “tax and tip are automatically divided proportionally.” Other people who have Tab can join the bill and pick their own items. The listing shows an update in June 2026.

There are plenty of newer receipt-splitting apps on the App Store. Before trusting one with your bill, see whether it wants an account and whether it uploads the photo to its own servers. The privacy label on the listing usually tells you.

Where Textora fits

Textora handles the part of splitting a bill that takes the longest: turning a crumpled receipt into rows you can work with. Items and prices come out as a table, ready for CSV or Numbers, on any iPhone or iPad running iOS 16 or later, wherever you are. Only the person holding the receipt needs it; everyone else just gets an amount.

Text recognition runs on the phone, so the receipt photo isn’t uploaded to read it, and there’s no sign-up needed to start scanning.

The same scan is useful after dinner. A batch of receipts from a trip goes into a searchable history, and Knowledge Cards pick out fields such as names, dates and amounts, which helps when you’re claiming expenses. I’ve written about that in the best receipt scanner apps for expense tracking and a simple receipt-scanning workflow.

Get Textora free on the App Store.

I build Textora. Facts about Apple’s feature and the other apps above are taken from Apple’s pages and each app’s official site or App Store listing, checked on 16 September 2026, and the tax and tip figures are an invented example; email support@textora.app if something has changed.

Sources: Apple Newsroom — Apple unveils innovative features and intelligence experiences across services, June 2026 · Apple Support — Siri AI: Use Siri mode in Camera on iPhone · Apple Support — Set up Apple Cash · Apple Support — Send and receive money with Apple Cash · Apple Support — Use Live Text to interact with content in a photo or video · Apple Support — Enter formulas and equations in Notes · MacRumors — What’s new with Visual Intelligence in iOS 27 · 9to5Mac — Apple confirms iOS 27 release date · Engadget — How to split bills in Apple Wallet with iOS 27 · Splitwise Pro · Splitwise · Tab on the App Store