Image to Text (OCR)
Turn a photo of a document, a screenshot or a scanned page into editable text. Choose the language, and the text is recognised right in your browser, ready to copy or save.
Free · No sign-up · Files stay on your device
How to use Image to Text (OCR)
- 1Choose an image (or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V).
- 2Pick the language of the text.
- 3Click "Extract text".
- 4Copy the text or download it as a .txt file.
Features
- English, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, French, German, Spanish and more
- Works with photos, screenshots and scans
- Paste screenshots straight from the clipboard
- Copy or download as .txt
- Your image stays on your device
Getting the best results
Use a sharp, well-lit image where the text is straight and fills most of the picture. Screenshots and scans work best. Handwriting and stylised fonts are much harder to read than printed text.
How it works
Recognition uses Tesseract, an open-source OCR engine originally developed by HP and later Google. It runs inside your browser: the engine and language data are downloaded the first time, but your image itself is never uploaded.
Frequently asked questions
Can it read handwriting?
Only neat, printed-style handwriting, and with mixed results. It is designed for typed or printed text.
Why is the first run slower?
The OCR engine and language data (a few megabytes) are downloaded the first time and then cached by your browser.
Can I extract text from a PDF?
If the PDF has real text, use our PDF to Text tool, which is faster and exact. For scanned PDFs, convert the page to an image with PDF to JPG first, then use this tool.