How to copy text from a screenshot or image
Text in a screenshot or photo is just pixels until something reads it. Here are the built-in options on each device and a way that works anywhere.
Someone sends a screenshot of an address, an error message, a table or a paragraph you need to quote and you can’t select a word of it. That is because there are no words in it, only pixels arranged to look like them. Getting the text out means something has to read it.
Built into your device
Most phones and computers can now do this themselves, if you know where to look.
- iPhone and iPad. Live Text works in Photos and the camera: press and hold on text in a photo or screenshot and it selects like normal text.
- Android. Google Lens, in the Photos app or the camera, has a Text option that lets you select and copy.
- Mac. Live Text works in Preview, Photos and Quick Look on recent versions of macOS.
- Windows. Recent versions of the Snipping Tool can find the text in a capture and Microsoft’s free PowerToys includes a Text Extractor.
These are good, private options for a quick word or two. They’re less convenient for a batch of images, a long document or a scanned PDF of several pages.
In the browser, on any device
Image to text reads screenshots, photos of documents and scanned PDFs. Paste a screenshot straight from the clipboard or drop in a batch and the recognised text appears ready to copy or download. The recognition engine runs in your browser, so the image never leaves your device, which matters for screenshots of messages, bank details or anything else you wouldn’t want on a stranger’s server.
Getting better results
The recogniser reads best when the text is sharp, straight and a reasonable size.
- Screenshot rather than photograph when the text is on a screen. It is always sharper.
- Crop to the text. Everything else in the frame is something the engine must decide is not text. The image cropper does this in a few seconds.
- Photograph pages straight on, in even light, with no shadow across them.
- Choose the right language before you start.
When the text is in a PDF
If you can select text in a PDF reader, the PDF already contains real text and PDF to text will extract it exactly. If you can’t, the PDF is a scan: a picture of each page. Image to text reads those page by page.
And if the reason you’re copying text is to share part of an image while hiding the rest, redact it properly instead of cropping around the private parts by eye.
For a related next step see Why can’t I copy text from a PDF?.
Common questions
Why can I not select the text in my screenshot?
A screenshot is a picture of your screen, so the letters in it are coloured pixels, not characters. Something has to recognise the shapes as letters first, which is what OCR, optical character recognition, does.
How accurate is text recognition?
On a sharp screenshot of normal text it is close to perfect. Accuracy drops with blur, small text, unusual fonts, text over busy backgrounds and photos taken at an angle. Handwriting is mostly beyond it. Always check names and numbers against the original.
Can it read text in other languages?
Yes, if you tell it which language. The recogniser uses the language to identify accented letters and whole words, so reading French with an English setting loses the accents.
Is it safe to put a screenshot of private messages into an online tool?
Only if the tool doesn’t upload it. Most OCR websites send your image to a server. The image to text tool on this site runs in your browser, so the screenshot stays on your device.