Free OCR tool

Copy text from a picture, not just a screenshot.

Drop in a photo of a document, whiteboard, receipt, or sign — or a plain screenshot — and copy the text out of it. OCR runs on your device: no upload, no signup, no limits.

Drop a picture here

or

PNG, JPG, WebP · English text works best

Runs in your browser with open-source OCR (Tesseract via WebAssembly). Your image never leaves your device.

Extracted text

Choose an image to extract its text.

Need the link behind a title with no visible URL? That is what SnapAction does.

Photos are harder than screenshots — here's how to get a clean result

This tool runs the same on-device OCR as SnapAction's screenshot to text converter, tuned for a broader kind of input: a picture from your camera roll, not only an app screenshot. Point it at a photographed page, a whiteboard from a meeting, a business card, or a printed receipt, and it reads the pixels back into copyable text inside your browser tab — no server, no account, no upload.

Photos behave differently from screenshots. A screenshot is already flat, sharp, and evenly lit; a photo can be angled, shadowed, or catching glare. For the cleanest result, shoot straight-on rather than at an angle, fill the frame with the text, and avoid glare on glossy paper or screens. If a picture comes back empty or garbled, retaking it closer and straighter usually fixes it faster than running the same crooked shot through OCR again.

OCR reads the words. SnapAction reads the screenshot.

Copying text out of a picture gets you the words on the page. If what you actually photographed was a saved iPhone screenshot — a repo, a listing, a booking, an event flyer — SnapAction's screenshot AI can go a step further: it identifies the resource the screenshot represents, recovers the canonical link with AI analysis and web search when one isn't visible, and saves the result as a typed card with a next action. That part is built specifically for the iPhone screenshot library via PhotoKit, not for general camera photos.

See the mechanics in OCR vs resource extraction, or start with the extract links from screenshots workflow.

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Copy text from a picture: questions

How do I copy text from a picture?

Drop the picture into the tool above or choose a file. OCR runs in your browser and returns the text, ready to copy or download — no upload required.

Does this work on photos, not just screenshots?

Yes. The OCR engine reads any picture — a photographed document, whiteboard, sign, business card, or receipt — the same way it reads an app screenshot. It reads pixels, not the source of the image.

Why did my photo come out garbled or blank?

Photos taken at an angle, in low light, or with glare are harder for OCR than a flat screenshot. Retake the photo straight-on, fill the frame with the text, and avoid reflections for a cleaner result.

Is my picture uploaded anywhere?

No. Recognition happens locally in your browser via WebAssembly (Tesseract). Your picture never leaves your device.

Can it copy text from a screenshot too?

Yes — screenshots, photos, scans, and most other image formats all go through the same on-device OCR.