In your browser
- Open Image to Text and choose the language of the text.
- Drop in screenshots, photos or a scanned PDF.
- Copy the text, or download it as a .txt file.
Recognition runs on your device, so documents are not uploaded. Sharp, straight images of printed text give the best results; handwriting is much less reliable.
On an iPhone or iPad
With iOS 15 or later, Live Text lets you press and hold text in a photo, or tap the text icon in the Camera or Photos app, then copy it.
On Android
Open the image in Google Photos or Google Lens and tap Text to select and copy it.
On Windows 11
Take a capture with the Snipping Tool and use Text actions to copy the text it finds.
On a Mac
With macOS Monterey or later, Live Text lets you select text directly in images in Preview, Photos and Safari.
PDFs that already have text
If you can already select words in a PDF, it does not need OCR. PDF to Text extracts that text instantly and exactly.
Getting a clean result
- Resolution: text recognition works best when capital letters are at least 20 pixels tall. Scan paper at 300 DPI, and zoom in before taking a screenshot of small text.
- One column at a time: text in two columns, or in a table, can be read straight across the page. Crop to one column first with Crop Image.
- The right language: choosing the wrong one turns accented letters into look-alikes, such as é into e or ß into B.
Check these characters
The most common mix-ups are 0 and O, 1, l and I, 5 and S, and "rn" read as "m". Read numbers, codes and email addresses back against the original before you use them.