Copy Text from an Image on Mac: Built-in Ways and a Faster One
By Eduard Bruch, developer of Optic · Updated
To copy text from an image on a Mac, open the image in Preview or Photos and try selecting the text with the cursor, because macOS Live Text can often recognize it there. If the image sits somewhere Live Text does not reach, such as inside a chat app, a design tool or a web app, use a screen OCR app that reads whatever is visible on screen.
Short answer: try Live Text in Preview or Photos first. My pick for everything else is Optic, a menu bar app that copies the text in any area you drag across the screen ($4.99, a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store).
Disclosure: I build Optic.
Why you cannot just select text in an image
An image is a grid of pixels, not a list of characters. A photo of a whiteboard, a screenshot of a recipe or a scanned letter looks like text to you, but to the app showing it, it is only a picture. To get real characters out of it, something has to run text recognition (OCR) on those pixels.
Built-in option 1: Live Text
Live Text works where Apple supports it: images in Preview, Photos, Quick Look and Safari. It does not work on arbitrary app windows, video calls or UI text.
- Open the image in Preview or Photos (or press Space in Finder to use Quick Look).
- Move the pointer over the text. If the cursor turns into a text cursor, drag to select.
- Press Command-C and paste wherever you need it.
If that works for your image, you do not need anything else.
Built-in option 2: screenshot, then Preview
If the image is inside an app where Live Text does nothing, take a screenshot of it with Shift-Command-4, open the screenshot in Preview and try Live Text there. It works, but it adds steps and leaves a screenshot file on your desktop each time.
The Optic workflow
Optic skips the file. It reads the text straight from the screen, inside a box you draw, and puts it on the clipboard.
- Click the Optic icon in the menu bar.
- Choose Capture Text.
- Drag a box over the text in the image.
- Paste with Command-V.
A small "Copied to clipboard" confirmation shows that it worked. Recognition uses Apple's Vision framework on your Mac, so no internet connection is needed and nothing is uploaded. On first use, macOS asks for the Screen Recording permission; Optic's onboarding walks you through it.
Some places this helps:
- Images in chat apps. A photo of meeting notes in Slack or Messages: drag across it without saving the file first.
- Design exports and mockups. Copy the text from a flat design comp instead of asking for the source file.
- Images in web apps. Text inside an image in a browser tab, a dashboard or a document viewer.
Optic recognizes 21 languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and each can be switched on or off in Settings. You can also choose how line breaks are handled: keep them, remove them, or merge wrapped lines into sentences.
Capture history
The last 20 captures stay in the menu bar popover with a small thumbnail, so you can copy an earlier one again without capturing it a second time. The history is stored locally on your Mac and never uploaded.
Where Optic does not fit
- It does not open image files. The image has to be visible on screen. Open it in Preview or any viewer first, then drag over it.
- One area at a time. It does not process folders of images or create searchable PDFs.
- No table extraction. You get text, not rows and columns.
- No translation. It copies the text in its original language.
- Handwriting is not a promised feature. It is built for printed and on-screen text.
For a wider look at the options, see screen OCR apps for Mac compared and how to copy text from anywhere on your screen. For images that arrive in chat, see copy text from a Slack image on Mac; for postal addresses, copy an address from an image; and for what screen OCR means in general, screen OCR for Mac.
FAQ
Can a Mac copy text from a picture without an app?
Yes, often. Live Text lets you select text in images in Preview, Photos, Quick Look and Safari on supported Macs. It does not reach images inside most other apps. For images anywhere else on screen, my pick is Optic.
How do I copy text from an image in Slack or another chat app?
Open the image in Preview if you can download it, or use a screen OCR tool like Optic and drag a box over the image where it is.
Does Optic need the internet to read text?
No. Text recognition runs on your Mac with Apple's Vision framework, and the app has no network access.
Is there an image to text converter for Mac?
macOS has one built in for image files: Live Text in Preview and Photos. Free web converters exist too; they work on a copy of your image that you upload to them. For images anywhere on screen, my pick is Optic, which reads the area you drag over on the Mac without uploading it. Optic does not open image files itself, so open the image first.
Can Optic read text from a photo on my iPhone?
Not directly. Optic is a Mac app and reads what is visible on your Mac screen, so the photo has to be open on the Mac.