Copy text from anything you can see
Photos, screenshots, paused videos, scanned PDFs, error dialogs — if it's on your screen, snip it and the text inside is recognized on your own machine and copied to the clipboard, ready to paste. No uploads, no account.
How to use it
- Open Screen Snip & Read and click New snip — the app steps aside and the screen freezes.
- Drag a rectangle over the text: an image you opened, a paused video, a PDF, a webpage, anything visible.
- The text is recognized offline and copied to the clipboard automatically — paste it wherever you need it.
- Want only part of it? Select words directly on the screenshot and just that selection is copied. Save as
.txt,.pdfor.docxwhen you need a file.
Paste-able text from un-copy-able places
Some text simply can't be selected: words baked into a photo, subtitles on a paused frame, an error dialog, a code snippet in a screenshot someone sent you, a scanned contract. Snip it and it becomes ordinary clipboard text you can paste into a document, a chat or a search box.
The recognition runs entirely on your computer with the Tesseract OCR engine, in 100+ languages — nothing you capture is uploaded anywhere.
The screenshot itself is selectable
After a snip, the picture isn't a dead image: every recognized word knows where it sits. Drag across the screenshot to highlight exactly the words you want — release, and they're copied in proper reading order. Double-click grabs a single word.
Right-click sends the text onward: into the built-in editor for cleanup, the case converter, or either side of a text comparison when you need to diff two snips.
QR codes and files too
If the snip contains a QR code, its content is decoded and copied along with the text — snip a QR off a webpage and you have the link, no phone required.
And when a clipboard isn't enough, save the recognized text as .txt, .pdf or .docx, or keep the snip itself as a PNG.
Questions and answers
Is my screenshot uploaded for the text recognition?
No. Recognition runs on your own computer with the Tesseract OCR engine. The snip never leaves your machine — which also means it works with no internet connection at all.
Can I copy text from a photo or picture file?
Yes — open the picture in any viewer and snip it. Anything you can display on screen works: photos, memes, screenshots people send you, video frames, slides.
Which languages does it read?
Tesseract reads 100+ languages, and the app automatically prefers the language packs you have installed, so snips that mix languages work too.
Can I copy just a few words instead of everything?
Yes. The screenshot stays selectable after the snip: drag across the words you want and only those are copied, in reading order. Double-click picks a single word.
Does it work on Windows, macOS and Linux?
Yes. macOS uses the system's native region selector (allow Screen Recording once in System Settings), and on Linux both X11 and Wayland desktops are supported through the standard desktop screenshot services.
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