OCR

Extract text from your screen, images, and PDFs

Select any screen area or choose an image or PDF to extract its text privately on your Mac. Recent successful results stay available in the OCR shelf widget, while macOS 26 can also preserve document lists and tables as Markdown.

What it does

  • Select any screen area with the system capture tool
  • Read images and PDFs entirely on device
  • Preserve lists and tables as Markdown on macOS 26
  • Reopen recent extractions from the shelf

How to use it

  1. Record a shortcut, then select any area of the screen. Recognition runs on device.
  2. Or choose an image or a PDF and pull the text out of the file instead.
  3. Set the completion action: show the result window, or copy the text immediately and skip the window entirely.
  4. Leave the language on Automatic unless you know every capture is in one language.

Where it shows up

  • Shelf widget
  • Global shortcut
  • Ring action
  • File action
  • Droppy for iPhone

Workflows

Copy text that refuses to be copied

A video, a screenshot, a PDF someone flattened. Select the area, and the text is on your clipboard.

Get a table out of a document

On macOS 26, document recognition preserves lists and tables as Markdown, so a table arrives as a table rather than as a run of words.

Grab it with the phone instead

Droppy for iPhone can OCR through the camera, and the result syncs back to the Mac attached to the image it came from.

Tips

  • Recent extractions stay in the OCR shelf widget, and you choose how many.
  • OCR text is indexed alongside its image in clipboard history, so searching a word from a screenshot finds the screenshot.
  • The Ring carries both area capture and file recognition as separate buttons.

Getting it

CategoryProductivity
SetupReady the moment you turn it on.
Where to turn it onSettings, Store, or open it in Droppy if the app is installed.