Guide · OCR
How to copy text from a screenshot on Mac
Stop retyping. Mac has OCR built in, and a good screenshot tool puts it one hotkey away.
Need the text from a design, an error message, or a web page that won’t let you select it? You don’t have to type it out. macOS includes on-device OCR, and the fastest way to reach it is a screenshot tool that reads text the moment you capture.
Use the built-in Mac ways first
In the macOS Screenshot app (Shift-Command-5), take a capture, then open it and select the text to copy. This works for text already saved as an image too — open it in Preview, select, and copy. If the image is a photo rather than a screenshot, Apple’s Live Text does the same trick in Preview, Photos, and Safari: hover until the cursor becomes a text selector, drag, copy. It’s free and fine for the occasional capture.
Where it falls down: it takes several steps — capture, open, select, copy — and it handles one capture at a time.
Getting clean text back (the part nobody tells you)
- Bigger is better. Recognition quality tracks pixel height — capture at the app’s real size instead of zooming out to fit more.
- Contrast beats fonts. Light gray text on white fails first; if you control the source, darken it.
- One block at a time beats the whole screen. A tight selection around the paragraph you need returns cleaner output than a full-desktop grab.
- Tables never survive intact. OCR returns rows as runs of text; expect to paste into a spreadsheet and re-split, whatever tool you use.
- Check numbers and codes by eye. O/0, l/1 and similar confusions still happen at small sizes — verify license keys and amounts before acting on them.
Get it in one step with iShot
With iShot, OCR is part of the capture. You make a region selection and the OCR panel lifts the text for you in one shot — copy it, or open or copy links and deep links directly. It runs on-device, so images never leave your Mac.
- Copy all on-screen text at once, not line by line.
- Decode QR codes and barcodes in the same scan.
- Copy links straight off the pixels — no hunting in bars or menus.
For text that’s already an image (a scan, a saved screenshot), open it in iShot’s editor and select the text to copy from it too.
Why on-device matters
On-device OCR means your screenshots aren’t uploaded to a server to be read. That keeps private content — passwords, purchase receipts, client work — on your machine.
Want to grab text off a long page or translate what you captured instead? See scrolling screenshots and translating text in screenshots.