Image to Text (OCR)

Extract text from images using OCR. Free, instant, and private.

Upload any image and extract the text from it using optical character recognition. Works with screenshots, photos of documents, scanned pages, and more. All processing runs in your browser using WebAssembly -- your images never leave your device. Need to extract text from PDFs instead? Try our PDF to Text converter.

4.7 / 5-- 196,000 votes

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Supports: JPG, PNG, WebP, BMP, GIF

How It Works

  1. 1
    Upload your image

    Click or drag and drop any image file. Screenshots, photos of documents, and scanned pages all work.

  2. 2
    Run text extraction

    Click Extract Text to start OCR processing. The tool analyzes each character in the image using AI-powered text recognition.

  3. 3
    Copy or download text

    Review the extracted text, copy it to your clipboard, or download it as a .txt file.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the OCR text extraction work?

This tool uses Tesseract.js, an open-source OCR engine that runs directly in your browser using WebAssembly. It analyzes the pixels in your image to detect and recognize text characters.

Are my images uploaded to a server?

No. All OCR processing happens locally in your browser. Your images never leave your device, ensuring complete privacy. The OCR engine and language data are downloaded once and cached. For more privacy-first tools, see our security page.

What image formats are supported?

JPG, PNG, WebP, BMP, GIF, and most standard image formats. Screenshots, photos of documents, and scanned images all work. For best results, use clear, high-contrast images. You can also resize your image or sharpen it first for better OCR results.

Why is the first scan slow?

The first time you use this tool, it downloads the OCR language model (about 4MB). This is cached in your browser, so subsequent scans are much faster.

Can I extract text from handwritten notes?

The OCR engine works best with printed text. Handwritten text recognition is limited and may produce inaccurate results. For best accuracy, use images with clear printed or typed text.

What languages does this support?

Currently this tool supports English text recognition. The OCR engine uses the English trained data model for character recognition.

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