I have a handy little app on macOS called TextSniper that takes a screenshot of a selected area, then runs OCR on that screenshot and puts the text on the clipboard. It’s perhaps the most useful $10 I’ve ever spent and I’m frankly surprised this doesn’t exist on other systems. A year or two after this was released Apple started letting people copy text directly out of images, so they might do the usual Apple thing of killing it by directly adding it to the OS. There might be something like this on Linux by now but I haven’t heard of it on Windows.
The Power Toys link says it’s based on Joe Finney’s Text Grab, and at the bottom of its GitHub page it links to the TextSniper app as the Mac version, with an affiliate link. I’m guessing that means the Mac app was inspired by the Windows program.
(This comment is not as facetious as it seems. I knew you could copy text from images, but I just tried to test some limitations, and it’s a weirdly comprehensive feature - I can copy text from photos and/or videos in the screenshots app, the Preview app, the Photos app, QuickTime, and even from YouTube videos in Safari (but not Firefox, interestingly enough) - assuming that means it’s an OS-level thing. Quick search says this rolled out in 2021.)
For me on Android it’s built into the app switching interface, similar to Alt-Tab on computer. Instead of selecting the app to bring it into focus, I can instead click something that lets me select text, and it opens it’s own interface to do so.
I’m not sure. I suspect that TextSniper predates the feature on Mac.
On Mac (and iOS, too) recognized text is just treated as text. So on Mac, you just get a text selection/entry cursor (the “I-beam”), and you can select text for whatever action (copy, lookup, etc). On iOS it’s same, except no cursor on account of it being a touch interface. It’s sort of annoying on iOS with images that have a lot of text - double clicking an image to zoom has to be done with care, otherwise it selects text instead of zooming in.
I was using it by 2020 for sure, so it predates the macOS and iOS feature. This was most handy in ERP software we were using that had most info display in unselectable windows. Really annoying when you wanted to copy something like a part number or invoice and put it in an email. This got us around that, and when macOS added the feature it still didn’t help us since these weren’t images.
No, this predates having it on either iOS or macOS by a year or two. I still found it more useful because this doesn’t require using images; the vast majority of my usage was when working for a company that had stupid ERP software where much of the data was displayed onscreen but couldn’t be copied.
I think on macOS and iOS it only works in actual image files, but this tool predates that by a year or two. This does the same thing but doesn’t require an image file; you just press the shortcut on your keyboard, draw a box over whatever’s on your screen that you want, and the text in the box goes on your clipboard. I think it’s effectively taking a screenshot but not saving it to disk, so you don’t have to clean those up later.
A dev named funinkina has made an application working alongside the KDE screenshot application spectacle. It’s surprisingly code which utilizes tesseract and works fantastically. Just compile, ln -s the app to your bin directory and give it a global shortcut like “CTRL+Shift+Print”.
I have a handy little app on macOS called TextSniper that takes a screenshot of a selected area, then runs OCR on that screenshot and puts the text on the clipboard. It’s perhaps the most useful $10 I’ve ever spent and I’m frankly surprised this doesn’t exist on other systems. A year or two after this was released Apple started letting people copy text directly out of images, so they might do the usual Apple thing of killing it by directly adding it to the OS. There might be something like this on Linux by now but I haven’t heard of it on Windows.
Microsoft powertoys has this feature for free
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-extractor
The Power Toys link says it’s based on Joe Finney’s Text Grab, and at the bottom of its GitHub page it links to the TextSniper app as the Mac version, with an affiliate link. I’m guessing that means the Mac app was inspired by the Windows program.
I can also do it on my android phone
I can also do that on my MacBook.
(This comment is not as facetious as it seems. I knew you could copy text from images, but I just tried to test some limitations, and it’s a weirdly comprehensive feature - I can copy text from photos and/or videos in the screenshots app, the Preview app, the Photos app, QuickTime, and even from YouTube videos in Safari (but not Firefox, interestingly enough) - assuming that means it’s an OS-level thing. Quick search says this rolled out in 2021.)
I wonder how this is different from TextSniper?
For me on Android it’s built into the app switching interface, similar to Alt-Tab on computer. Instead of selecting the app to bring it into focus, I can instead click something that lets me select text, and it opens it’s own interface to do so.
I’m not sure. I suspect that TextSniper predates the feature on Mac.
On Mac (and iOS, too) recognized text is just treated as text. So on Mac, you just get a text selection/entry cursor (the “I-beam”), and you can select text for whatever action (copy, lookup, etc). On iOS it’s same, except no cursor on account of it being a touch interface. It’s sort of annoying on iOS with images that have a lot of text - double clicking an image to zoom has to be done with care, otherwise it selects text instead of zooming in.
I was using it by 2020 for sure, so it predates the macOS and iOS feature. This was most handy in ERP software we were using that had most info display in unselectable windows. Really annoying when you wanted to copy something like a part number or invoice and put it in an email. This got us around that, and when macOS added the feature it still didn’t help us since these weren’t images.
Apple has had it built into iOS for a while now; This person likely got scammed out of $10 to “buy” a feature that was already baked into their OS.
No, this predates having it on either iOS or macOS by a year or two. I still found it more useful because this doesn’t require using images; the vast majority of my usage was when working for a company that had stupid ERP software where much of the data was displayed onscreen but couldn’t be copied.
This has been built in to MacOS for a little while now though?
I think on macOS and iOS it only works in actual image files, but this tool predates that by a year or two. This does the same thing but doesn’t require an image file; you just press the shortcut on your keyboard, draw a box over whatever’s on your screen that you want, and the text in the box goes on your clipboard. I think it’s effectively taking a screenshot but not saving it to disk, so you don’t have to clean those up later.
I don’t know about desktop/laptop stuff but I can do it on my Pixel phone (Android, I know).
A dev named funinkina has made an application working alongside the KDE screenshot application spectacle. It’s surprisingly code which utilizes tesseract and works fantastically. Just compile, ln -s the app to your bin directory and give it a global shortcut like “CTRL+Shift+Print”.
https://github.com/funinkina/spectacle-ocr-screenshot