Image to Text Converter
Extract text from a photo, screenshot, or scanned page and copy it in seconds. Drop in an image or paste a screenshot, pick the language, and the text appears next to your image, ready to edit, copy, or download. This free OCR tool runs in your browser, so your image is never uploaded.
Drag and drop an image here, paste a screenshot, or
JPG, PNG, WebP, or HEIC up to 25 MB. Nothing is uploaded.
Pick the language the text is written in. Turn off Keep line breaks to join lines into paragraphs.
What is OCR?
OCR (optical character recognition) turns a picture of text into real text you can select, copy, edit, and search. To your computer, a photo of a page is just colored dots. OCR finds the lines of text in the picture and works out which letters they are.
This tool uses Tesseract, a well-known open source OCR engine, running inside your browser. It reads the image line by line using a model trained for the language you pick, which is why choosing the right language makes such a difference. Before reading, small images are enlarged to twice their size, because the engine has trouble with letters only a few pixels tall.
The result is plain text with the line breaks from the image. You can edit it in place, join the lines into paragraphs, and see a confidence score that tells you how sure the engine is about what it read.
Why use our image to text converter
- ·No upload. Your image is read on your own device, so private documents stay private.
- ·Paste a screenshot. Press Ctrl+V to read a screenshot straight from your clipboard, with no file to save.
- ·23 languages. Including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Tamil, and Sinhala.
- ·Side by side. The text sits next to the image, so checking and fixing it is quick.
- ·Phone photos work. iPhone HEIC photos open directly and are turned the right way up.
- ·Free. No signup and no limit on how many images you convert.
How to convert an image to text
- 1
Add your image
Drag a photo or screenshot onto the box, click to pick a file, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac). It opens JPG, PNG, WebP, and iPhone HEIC photos. The text is read as soon as the image loads.
- 2
Pick the language of the text
English is selected to start. If your text is in another language, choose it from the list and the image is read again. Picking the right language matters more than anything else for accurate results.
- 3
Check and fix the text
The text appears next to your image so you can compare the two. The result box is editable, so you can fix a wrong letter before you copy it. Turn off Keep line breaks to join the lines back into paragraphs.
- 4
Copy or download the text
Copy the text to your clipboard with one click, or download it as a .txt file. Your image is never uploaded or saved.
How to get better OCR results from a photo
Most bad results come from the photo, not the reader. These fixes make the biggest difference:
- ·Shoot straight on. Hold the phone directly above the page, not at an angle. Slanted lines and curved pages near a book's spine are hard to read.
- ·Use even light. Shadows across the page and glare on glossy paper hide letters. Daylight from a window works well.
- ·Crop to the text. Pictures, logos, and busy backgrounds around the text can turn into stray characters. Crop the image to just the part you need first.
- ·Keep it sharp. Tap to focus before you take the photo. Blur cannot be fixed afterwards, and a blurry "e" easily becomes a "c".
- ·Use the original screenshot. A screenshot that was sent through a chat app is often compressed and smaller. The original file from your device reads more cleanly.
- ·Match the language. Reading French text with English selected gets the accents wrong, so "forêt" comes out as "forét" and "à" as "a". Always pick the language the text is written in.
What image to text OCR cannot do well
| Image | What happens | What to do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Handwriting | Usually poor results, since the reader is built for print | Type it out, or use a tool made for handwriting |
| Tables and forms | You get plain lines of text, and the column layout is lost | Paste into a spreadsheet and split the columns there |
| Vertical Chinese or Japanese text | Not supported. The Chinese and Japanese options read horizontal lines | Use a horizontal version of the text if you have one |
| Math formulas | Symbols, fractions, and powers are often lost | Retype the formula |
| Decorative or curved text, like logos | Letters are often missed or misread | Crop to the plain text around it |
| PDF files | Not accepted, since the tool reads images | Convert the page with PDF to JPG, then add the image |
OCR languages you can extract text in
Pick one of these from the Text language list. Each language's data downloads the first time you use it (under 3 MB) and is saved in your browser, so it loads faster the next time.
- English
- Arabic
- Bengali
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Dutch
- French
- German
- Hindi
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Sinhala
- Spanish
- Tamil
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
Who converts images to text
Anyone who needs the words from a picture without retyping them. These are the people who use it most:
- ·Students. Copy a quote from a photo of a textbook page, or pull the text off a lecture slide, instead of typing it out word by word.
- ·Office work. Turn a printed letter, form, or invoice into text you can paste into an email or a document, rather than retyping it.
- ·Developers and IT support. Get the exact text of an error message or a bit of code from a screenshot someone sent you, so you can search for it or paste it.
- ·Anyone copying text from a screenshot. Pull the words out of a screenshot of a post, a chat, a menu, or a sign, when the app you saw it in does not let you select the text.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I extract text from an image?
- Add the image to the tool by dragging it in, picking the file, or pasting a screenshot with Ctrl+V. The text is read right away and shows up next to the image. Choose the language the text is written in if it is not English, check the result, then copy it or download it as a .txt file.
- Is my image uploaded to a server?
- No. The text reader runs inside your browser, and the reader and its language files are loaded from this site, not from a third party. Your image is never uploaded, so it works for private documents like letters, bills, and IDs.
- Why is the extracted text wrong or full of strange characters?
- The most common causes are a blurry or dark photo, text that is very small, a page photographed at an angle, and the wrong language being selected. Retake the photo straight on in good light, crop away anything that is not text, and check the language setting. Small images are already enlarged before reading, which helps with tiny screenshot text.
- Can it read handwriting?
- Not well. The reader is built for printed and typed text, so results on handwriting are usually poor, and joined-up writing rarely works. Clear printed text, screenshots, and scans give the best results.
- Can I convert a PDF to text with this?
- Not directly, because it reads images. If you can already select the text in your PDF, copy it from there instead. For a scanned PDF, convert the page to an image with PDF to JPG first, then add that image here.
- Which languages can it read?
- It reads 23 languages: English, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Sinhala, Spanish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. Each language's data downloads the first time you use it (under 3 MB) and is saved in your browser for next time.
- How do I copy text from a screenshot?
- Take the screenshot, then click anywhere on this page and press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac). The screenshot is pasted straight in and read, with no need to save it as a file first. On Windows, Windows+Shift+S takes a screenshot of part of the screen. On a Mac, Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+4 copies one to the clipboard.
- Does it keep the formatting of the text?
- No. You get plain text. Line breaks are kept by default, and you can turn them off to join lines into paragraphs. Fonts, bold, colors, and table layouts are not kept.
- What does the confidence score mean?
- It is how sure the reader is about the text, averaged over the whole image. A high score usually means a clean result. Below 60% the score turns amber and a note suggests checking the text closely, because some words are likely wrong.
- Is this image to text converter free?
- Yes. It is free with no signup and no limit on how many images you convert.