3 min read
How to Extract Text From an Image — Free, In Your Browser
Turn a screenshot or photo into editable text with free browser-based OCR. No uploads, no signup — the image never leaves your device.
Ever needed to copy text out of a screenshot, a photo of a document, or an image where the text isn't selectable? That's what OCR (optical character recognition) is for — and you can do it for free without handing your image to a server.
Extract text in 3 steps
- Open the Image to Text tool and drop in a JPEG, PNG or screenshot.
- Click Extract text. The first run downloads a small language pack once (about 11MB), then it works instantly and offline.
- Copy the recognized text, or download it as a .txt file.
The recognition engine runs as WebAssembly right in your browser — your image is never uploaded, so it's safe for documents, receipts and anything private.
Try the Image to TextExtract text from an image or screenshot right in your browser — nothing is uploaded. Runs on-device with Tesseract.Tips for the most accurate results
- Use a sharp, high-contrast image — dark text on a light background works best.
- Keep the text roughly horizontal; heavy skew lowers accuracy.
- Bigger, clearer text beats tiny or blurry text every time.
- Photos of screens or printed pages usually work well; handwriting is hit-or-miss.
OCR is powerful but not perfect — always proofread numbers and symbols. For a quick copy-paste from a screenshot, though, it saves a lot of retyping.