Image to Text Converter
Copy the words out of a screenshot, photo or scanned page. Drop or paste an image, pick the language and get editable text in seconds.
- Files stay on your device
- No sign-up
- Free to use
How to use Image to Text
- Drop an image onto the upload area, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V.
- Select the language of the text in the image.
- Select Extract text and wait a few seconds for recognition to finish.
- Copy the text or download it as a .txt file.
Image to Text features
Paste screenshots directly
Take a screenshot and press Ctrl+V; there is no need to save a file first.
16 languages
English, Bengali, Hindi, Arabic, Urdu, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Confidence score
See how certain the engine is, so you know how carefully to proofread.
Private recognition
OCR runs in your browser. The image is not sent to a server.
Automatic enlargement
Small text in screenshots is scaled up before recognition for better accuracy.
When to use Image to Text
- Copying text from a screenshot of an error message, chat or web page.
- Digitising a printed page, receipt or business card photographed with a phone.
- Getting a quote out of an image shared on social media.
- Extracting text from a slide or whiteboard photo into notes.
Image to Text FAQ
How accurate is it?
Clear printed text on a plain background is recognised very accurately. Results get worse with blur, skew, low resolution, stylised fonts, busy backgrounds and handwriting.
How can I improve the result?
Use the sharpest image you have, crop it to the text you need, make sure the text is horizontal, and select the correct language. Dark text on a light background works best.
Can it read handwriting?
Only occasionally. The engine is trained on printed type; neat block letters may partly work, joined-up handwriting generally will not.
Does it keep the layout?
Line breaks are preserved. Columns, tables and font styling are not; the output is plain text.
Is my image uploaded?
No. The OCR engine runs locally in your browser. For languages other than English, a language file is downloaded from a public CDN, but your image stays on your device.
I have a scanned PDF. Can I use this?
Use the PDF OCR tool, which processes every page of a PDF and can also produce a searchable PDF.
How OCR reads an image
Optical character recognition turns pictures of text into characters a computer can edit. The engine first separates text from background, then finds lines, splits them into words and passes each word through a neural network trained on many fonts. A language model helps choose between look-alike results, which is why selecting the right language matters.
Resolution is the biggest factor in accuracy. The recogniser works best when lowercase letters are around 20 to 30 pixels tall. Screenshots of small interface text fall below that, so this tool enlarges small images before recognition. Photographs benefit from good, even lighting and from being taken straight on rather than at an angle.