How to Convert an Image to Text with Free OCR

OCR (optical character recognition) turns pictures of text — screenshots, scanned pages, photos of documents — into text you can select, copy and edit. Here's how to do it for free without uploading your image to a server.

Get the best OCR results

Accuracy depends on the source. Use a sharp, straight, well-lit image where the text is large enough to read, and avoid heavy skew or glare. Cropping tight to just the text before running OCR also helps. Printed text reads far better than messy handwriting.

Extract the text in 3 steps

1. 1Open the Image to Text tool and upload your screenshot, scan or photo.
2. 2Choose the language of the text (English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese and more) and click Extract.
3. 3Fix any misreads in the text box, then copy the text or download it as a .txt file.

How private is it?

The recognition runs in your browser on your device — your image is never uploaded. Only the small language model is downloaded once from a CDN and cached, so the next scan in that language is faster.