How to extract text from a screenshot on Mac

Method 1: macOS Live Text (built-in)

Apple has shipped on-device OCR since macOS 12 Monterey under the name Live Text. It works in Photos, Preview, Quick Look, and Safari, and it runs entirely on your Mac with no internet required.

Step-by-step with Preview

1. Open the screenshot by double-clicking the image file (it opens in Preview by default).
2. Click and drag over the text in the image. If the text is recognizable, your cursor changes to a text-selection cursor and the text highlights.
3. Press ⌘C to copy the recognized text. Paste it anywhere with ⌘V.

Step-by-step with Photos

1. Open the image in the Photos app.
2. Hover over text in the image. A small "Live Text" indicator appears in the bottom-right corner of the photo when text is detected.
3. Click that indicator to highlight all detected text, or click and drag to select specific text.
4. Right-click → Copy, or press ⌘C.

Step-by-step with Quick Look

1. Select the image file in Finder and press Spacebar to open Quick Look.
2. Click and drag to select text directly in the preview.
3. ⌘C to copy.

Method 2: automatic OCR with Maus

Live Text is great when you remember to use it. The problem is the workflow — you have to open the image, manually select the text region, and copy. If you process screenshots all day (devs, designers, support teams, vibe coders), that adds up.

Maus solves this by running OCR automatically on every screenshot you copy. The recognized text is stored alongside the image in your clipboard history. Both versions are searchable and pasteable later.

Step-by-step with Maus

1. Install Maus from mausformac.com (free).
2. Take a screenshot normally with ⌃⌘⇧4 (which copies to clipboard, doesn't save to desktop).
3. Done. Maus has captured the image AND extracted the text. The OCR result appears as a child item right below the image in Maus's history.
4. Press ⌘⇧V to open Maus. Search the recognized text. Paste either the image or the text — your choice.

The OCR runs locally using Apple's Vision framework. No internet, no cloud, no account.

Live Text vs Maus OCR

Both use the same underlying recognition engine (Apple Vision). The difference is workflow. If you only need to grab text from an image once a week, Live Text is fine. If screenshots are part of your daily flow, automatic OCR turns them into searchable text without you thinking about it.

Common use cases for screenshot OCR

Code from screenshots

Someone shares a code snippet as a screenshot in Slack, Discord, Twitter, or a conference talk. Instead of retyping, capture the screenshot — Maus OCRs it, and the code is in your clipboard ready to paste into your editor.

Error messages from teammates

A teammate sends "look what just happened" with a screenshot of a stack trace. The error message is in your clipboard history within a second of you copying the image — searchable, copyable, ready for Google or your terminal.

Receipts, invoices, IDs

Screenshot of a receipt, invoice number, address, or ID. Copy the image, the text is extracted automatically — no retyping for forms, expense reports, or shipping addresses.

Whiteboards and meeting notes

Photo of a whiteboard or a meeting note from your phone, copied to your Mac via Universal Clipboard. Maus extracts the text — searchable along with your other notes.

Slides and PDFs

Quick screenshot of a slide or PDF page where the text isn't selectable. OCR extracts what's there. Combined with multipaste, you can grab several slides' worth of text and paste them in order into your notes.

What if Live Text doesn't work on a screenshot?

Live Text fails on:

• Very small text (low resolution images)
• Stylized or decorative fonts the OCR engine doesn't recognize
• Heavily skewed or rotated images
• Languages outside the supported set

Maus uses the same engine, so the same limitations apply. If Live Text won't work, Maus won't either. For those edge cases (handwriting, very stylized art, vertical text), specialized OCR tools like ABBYY FineReader or cloud APIs from Google/Azure might give better results — at the cost of sending your image off-device.

FAQ