Modern OCR can read handwriting with reasonable accuracy, but it remains meaningfully less reliable than printed text recognition, especially for cursive or heavily stylized writing.
Why handwriting is fundamentally harder
Printed fonts are highly consistent — the same letter looks nearly identical every time. Handwriting varies enormously between people and even within the same person's writing, giving the recognition model far less consistent structure to rely on.
Where accuracy is highest
Clear, separated block-print handwriting (rather than connected cursive) sees meaningfully better recognition rates than fast, flowing cursive script — printing by hand, if legibility for OCR matters, genuinely helps.
Realistic expectations
For personal notes and forms filled out by hand, expect good-but-imperfect results — reliable enough to make a document searchable in a rough sense, but worth a manual proofread for anything where precision matters.
Does OCR handle mixed printed and handwritten content on the same page?
Yes, generally — most modern OCR systems process a page region by region, so a form with printed labels and handwritten answers can have each recognized reasonably well independently.