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Image to Text: Copy Text from a Picture

Copy the words out of a photo, screenshot or scanned PDF. 11 languages. Free, private, no sign-up.

In plain words: Drop a photo, screenshot or scanned PDF and the words are read out of it so you can copy and paste them. Clear, straight, well-lit images work best. Handwriting and blurry photos may come out with mistakes.

๐Ÿ”’ 100% Local Browser Execution โ€” Files never leave your device โœ“ No email ยท No sign-up ยท No watermark ยท Free

Drop images or a scanned PDF here JPG, PNG, WebP, iPhone HEIC, screenshots or scanned PDFs. Add several at once. Choose files or drag & drop ยท or paste a screenshot (Ctrl+V)

Works best on clear, printed text. Handwriting, tiny print and very blurry photos are unreliable. Your files never leave your device.

๐Ÿ”— Chain next workflow: Jump straight to a related tool
๐Ÿ”ข Word Counter & Character Counter ๐Ÿ–ผ๏ธ JPG to PDF: Turn Photos into a PDF โœ‰๏ธ Paste ChatGPT Answers Cleanly into Email or Word

How to Use Image to Text: Copy Text from a Picture

  1. Pick the language of your text (add a second one if the document mixes two).
  2. Drop photos, screenshots or a scanned PDF, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V. Tick "Improve contrast" for phone photos of paper.
  3. Check the text, then copy it, download a .txt file or save a searchable PDF.

Get the words out of a picture

A screenshot of an error message, a photo of a recipe, a scanned letter, a PDF that's really just pictures: the text is right there, but you can't select it. WeShoal reads it for you with optical character recognition (OCR) and gives you plain text to edit, copy and paste anywhere.

What you can drop in

  • Images: JPG, PNG, WebP and iPhone HEIC photos.
  • Screenshots: press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on Mac) to paste one straight from your clipboard.
  • Scanned PDFs: every page is read in turn, with a separator between pages.
  • Several files at once: they queue up, each with its own progress bar.

Languages

English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi and Chinese (Simplified). If a document mixes two, add a second language. The first time, your browser downloads the reading engine (about 1.4 MB) and the language pack (usually 1โ€“3 MB). They are then saved, so later runs start straight away.

Searchable PDF

Besides plain text, you can download a searchable PDF. It looks like your scan but has an invisible text layer, so you can search it with Ctrl+F and copy passages.

Tips, and honesty about accuracy

  • Use a sharp, well-lit, straight-on photo that fills the frame.
  • Tick Improve contrast for phone photos of paper with shadows. Leave it off for screenshots.
  • OCR is best on clear printed text. Handwriting, tiny print, decorative fonts and complex tables are unreliable, so give the result a quick read.

Most OCR sites upload your images. WeShoal runs the open-source Tesseract engine in your browser, so your files never leave your device.