Screenshots and recording
How to copy text from an image or screenshot on a Mac
Live Text lets you select words in photos and screenshots in Preview and Photos. Here is how to use it, where it does not reach, and how Orrel copies text from any part of the screen with one shortcut.
Text locked inside an image is a daily annoyance: an error message in a screenshot someone sent you, a serial number on a photo of a box, a paragraph in a video you have paused. macOS can read most of it with Live Text.
Live Text in Preview and Photos
Open the image in Preview. Move the pointer over the text and it turns into a text cursor. Drag to select, then press ⌘C, or Control-click and choose Copy Text. If dragging draws a box instead, choose Tools › Text Selection.
Photos works the same way: open a photo, hover over the text and drag to select it. Control-clicking a selection also offers Look Up and Translate.
Live Text is switched on in System Settings › General › Language & Region. It is not available in every language or region.
Text on the screen itself
Live Text works on images that are open in an app that supports it. For words on screen that you cannot select, such as text inside a video, a remote desktop, an app's dialog or a design tool, the built-in route is two steps:
- Press ⌃⇧⌘4 and drag over the text. The screenshot goes to the clipboard instead of a file.
- Open Preview and choose File › New from Clipboard, then select and copy the text with Live Text.
It works, and it is enough steps that most people retype short text instead.
Scanned PDFs
A scanned PDF is a picture of a page, so there is no text layer to select. Preview can often pick out the words with Live Text anyway. If it cannot, choose File › Export, save the page as a PNG and open that, or use an app that runs text recognition across the whole PDF.
Accuracy tips
- Bigger is better. Zoom in before taking the screenshot. Small type is where recognition fails.
- Check codes and numbers. 0 and O, 1 and l, and 5 and S are the usual mix-ups in serial numbers and passwords.
- Straighten photos. Text photographed at an angle reads worse than text shot square-on.
How Orrel does it
Press ⌃⇧⌘2 anywhere and drag over the text. Orrel reads it on your Mac with Apple's Vision framework and puts the words on the clipboard, ready to paste. One shortcut instead of a screenshot, an app and a selection, and it works on anything visible: video frames, dialogs, remote sessions, images on web pages.
Orrel also reads the text in screenshots and images saved on your desktop and in Downloads. That means you can search for a screenshot by what it showed, such as screenshots with wifi, and Tidy can name screenshots after their content.
If you connect an AI assistant to Orrel, its read-file-text tool returns the text from PDFs, scans and images, so you can ask "what is the total on the invoice I downloaded last month" without opening anything.
Where Orrel stops
Orrel uses the same on-device recognition as macOS, so it shares its limits: handwriting, unusual fonts, tiny or low-contrast text and some languages are read less reliably, and it gives you plain text without layout or table structure. The Copy Text shortcut needs Screen Recording permission, which macOS asks for the first time. Text in images is indexed for the desktop and Downloads only, not your whole drive or Photos library.
Questions
Why can't I select text in an image in Preview?
Check that Live Text is on in System Settings › General › Language & Region, and that Preview's Tools › Text Selection is chosen. Live Text is not available in every language or region.
Can Live Text read handwriting?
Sometimes. Clear handwriting is often recognised; joined-up or small writing much less reliably. Check the copied text before relying on it.
Does Orrel send screenshots anywhere to read them?
No. Text is recognised on your Mac with Apple's Vision framework. Nothing is uploaded.