Free Image to Text OCR Online

A free image to text OCR tool: pull editable text out of photos, screenshots, and scans — right in your browser.

Free tool · No sign-up · Private

Drop an image here

or click to browse — screenshots, scans, and photos of documents work best.

How this works: the first run downloads the OCR engine (about 10 MB) and caches it in your browser. Recognition itself takes roughly 10–30 seconds depending on image size — larger images take longer.

Private by design. Everything runs 100% in your browser — the OCR engine and your image never touch our servers, and nothing is stored anywhere.

About this tool

About the Image to Text OCR

Image to text OCR reads the words inside your pictures and hands them back as editable text. Upload a photo, screenshot, or scanned page to this free online tool and the optical character recognition engine — running entirely in your browser — extracts the English text for you to copy and edit. Students digitize textbook pages, professionals pull text from slides and whiteboards, and anyone can rescue the words from a screenshot instead of retyping them.

Accuracy depends on the source: crisp, high-contrast text on a clean background extracts almost perfectly, while blurry photos, decorative fonts, and cluttered backgrounds produce more errors — always proofread important passages. Because the OCR runs on your device, your images are never uploaded anywhere, which makes this safe for documents you would not send to a server. The extracted text is plain and editable, ready to paste into any document.

How it works

Three steps to editable text

Upload an image

Drag and drop a photo, screenshot, or scan — or click to browse. Clear, high-contrast text reads best.

Extract the text

Press Extract text. The OCR engine loads (about 10 MB on first run) and reads your image in 10–30 seconds.

Edit and copy

The result lands in an editable box. Fix any misreads, then copy the clean text with one click.

Good to know

Getting accurate results

OCR accuracy is mostly about the input image. These habits help a lot.

Straight and sharp

Photograph documents straight-on in good light. Skewed angles and motion blur are the top causes of garbled output.

High contrast wins

Dark text on a light background reads far better than light text on busy or dark backgrounds.

Printed beats handwritten

Printed and on-screen text recognizes reliably. Handwriting — even neat handwriting — is a different, much harder problem.

Always proofread

Similar-looking characters (0/O, 1/l/I) get mixed up. Skim the extracted text before pasting it anywhere important.

FAQ

OCR questions

How does the OCR work?

Your browser downloads the Tesseract OCR engine (about 10 MB, cached after the first run) and reads the image locally. Recognition takes roughly 10–30 seconds depending on image size — larger images take longer.

Which languages are supported?

English only, for now. Clear printed English text — screenshots, documents, signs, book pages — gives the best results.

Why is some text misread?

OCR is best with sharp, high-contrast printed text. It struggles with handwriting, stylized fonts, blurry photos, rotated text, and busy backgrounds. For best results, use a straight-on, well-lit capture. Always proofread the result.

Is my image uploaded anywhere?

No. Both the OCR engine download (from a public CDN) and the recognition itself happen on your device — your image never leaves your browser and nothing is stored.

Can I edit the extracted text?

Yes — the result appears in an editable text box. Fix any misread words, then copy the cleaned text with one click.

How do I extract text from a screenshot for free?

Upload the screenshot and the in-browser OCR reads the visible text into an editable box — copy it straight into your document.

Which languages does the OCR support?

English text is supported, including common Latin characters, numbers, and punctuation. Handwriting and heavily stylized fonts are not supported — clean printed text gives the best results.

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For developers

Need this programmatically?

YATools also exposes simple REST APIs for screenshots, audio, documents, and more — free tier included.

Explore the API →