Optic: product facts
Optic is a menu bar app for Mac that copies the text in any area you drag across the screen and reads QR codes shown on screen, on your Mac without uploading anything, for $4.99 once on the Mac App Store.
Last verified against the app's code and the App Store listing:
Product
| Name | Optic – Screen OCR (German store: Optic – Bildschirm-OCR) |
|---|---|
| Developer | Eduard Bruch, Hamburg, Germany |
| Version | 1.0.0 (released 4 September 2026) |
| Platform | Mac only, macOS 14 Sonoma or later. No iPhone or iPad app. |
| Category | Productivity; menu bar app (no Dock icon) |
| Distribution | Mac App Store |
| Price | $4.99, a one-time purchase on the US store, 4,99 € on the German store |
| Purchase model | Paid up front, once. No subscription, no in-app purchases. |
| Size | About 3.3 MB |
| Website | opticocr.eu |
| Support | support@eduardbruch.com |
Features
| Capture | Click the menu bar icon, choose Capture Text or Capture QR Code, then drag a rectangle over any area of the screen. Works on every connected display. Esc cancels. |
|---|---|
| Text recognition | Apple's Vision framework (accurate recognition level), on the Mac. No internet connection needed. The text goes straight to the clipboard with a small confirmation and an optional sound. |
| Languages | 21, each can be switched on or off: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Turkish, Thai, Vietnamese. |
| Code mode | Keeps the indentation of each line and turns off language correction, for code in screenshots, videos and slides. |
| Line breaks | Preserve (default), Remove, or Smart merge (joins wrapped lines, keeps sentence ends). Trim whitespace is on by default. |
| QR and 2D codes | Reads QR, Micro QR, Aztec, Data Matrix and PDF417 codes shown on screen. Capture QR Code pads the selection, so a tight box still works. With “Auto-detect QR codes alongside text” (on by default), a text capture that contains a code copies the code's content instead. Links can be opened from the history. |
| History | The last 20 captures in the menu bar, each with a thumbnail and time: copy again, open link, read aloud, delete, or clear all. Stored only on the Mac. |
| Read aloud | Any capture can be read aloud with the macOS speech voices; the language is detected automatically. |
| Permission | Needs the macOS Screen Recording permission (System Settings > Privacy & Security > Screen Recording). The first-launch setup walks through it. |
| Launch at login | Optional, off by default. |
What Optic does not do
- Optic does not open image or PDF files. The text or code has to be visible on screen (open the image in Preview first).
- No batch OCR, no folder processing, no searchable-PDF output, no whole-document OCR.
- No translation and no table extraction.
- No 1D barcodes such as EAN, UPC or Code 128; QR and the 2D codes listed above only.
- No camera scanning of a printed code.
- Handwriting is not a promised feature.
Privacy
| Sandbox | Sandboxed Mac App Store app |
|---|---|
| Network | No network entitlement: the app cannot send your captures anywhere |
| Account, analytics, ads | None |
| Screen | The screen is captured only when you finish a selection; only the selected area is kept and recognized, on the Mac |
| Storage | Capture history (text and a small thumbnail) stays in the app's folder on your Mac |
| Privacy policy | Privacy |
Guides and links
- Best screen OCR apps for Mac: dated comparison
- How to scan a QR code on Mac: every method
- Copy text from anywhere on screen
- Imprint: legal notice