Text Lens

Extract text from anywhere on your screen (OCR). Perfect for capturing text from videos, PDFs, presentations, or any app where copying isn't possible.


■ Highlights

- Extract text from anywhere on your screen
- Scan QR codes and barcodes
- Works completely offline
- Global keyboard shortcut to activate capture
- Extract text from images on clipboard or files
- Drag and drop images onto menu bar icon to extract text
- Optionally shows captured text in a window with the ability to edit
- Enables doing multiple captures and copy as a single text


■ Supported languages

- English
- French
- Italian
- German
- Spanish
- Portuguese
- Chinese, Simplified
- Chinese, Traditional
- Cantonese, Simplified
- Cantonese, Traditional
- Korean
- Japanese
- Russian
- Ukrainian
- Thai
- Vietnamese
- Arabic
- Arabic, Najdi
- Turkish
- Indonesian
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- Norwegian Nynorsk
- Norwegian Bokmål
- Malay
- Polish
- Romanian
- Swedish


■ FAQ

‣ How is this different from macOS Live Text?

Unlike Live Text which only works in supported apps with images, this app works everywhere on your screen - including videos, webpages, and apps where Live Text isn't available.

‣ Can more languages be added?

No, language support is controlled by macOS because the app uses macOS's built-in text recognition engine.


More FAQs on the website.


■ Privacy

Everything is done locally on your device. Nothing leaves your device. The app is not even able to connect to the internet due to self-imposed restrictions that are enforced by macOS (no network entitlement).