Extract Text from Image (OCR)
100% private — runs on your device, never uploaded. Works offline once loaded.
Extract readable text from photos, scanned documents and screenshots using OCR. The engine runs entirely in your browser — your image is never uploaded.
What OCR is doing under the hood
Optical Character Recognition works by first locating regions of an image that look like text (line and word segmentation), then classifying the shape of each character against patterns it learned during training, and finally assembling the results back into words and lines using language and layout heuristics. It's fundamentally a pattern-matching problem, not true 'reading' — which is why OCR can confidently misread an 'O' as a '0' or an 'l' as a '1' when the shapes are ambiguous at the resolution provided.
This tool uses a browser-based OCR engine that downloads its trained recognition model on first use (roughly 2 MB per language), caches it, and then runs entirely inside your browser tab for every scan after that — no round trip to a server is needed once the model is loaded.
Where this actually gets used
Common cases include pulling a phone number or address off a photographed business card, digitizing a printed receipt for expense records, converting a scanned contract page into editable text you can search or paste into a document, and extracting quotes or numbers from a screenshot instead of retyping them by hand.
It's also useful for accessibility: turning a photographed textbook page or whiteboard photo into text that can be pasted into a translator or text-to-speech tool.
What affects accuracy
Recognition quality depends heavily on the source image, not just the engine. Clean, high-contrast, horizontally aligned printed text in a common font recognizes near-perfectly. Accuracy drops noticeably with low resolution, skewed or rotated photos, handwriting, stylized fonts, low contrast (like light grey text on white), and busy backgrounds behind the text.
- Crop tightly to the text region before scanning when possible
- Straighten skewed photos — OCR engines struggle with rotated lines
- Increase lighting/contrast on photographed (not scanned) documents
- Select the correct language before recognition; a mismatched language model actively hurts accuracy
Language support and limits
The tool supports multiple recognition languages, each loaded as a separate model file, so switching languages triggers a small additional download the first time you use it. There's no page limit or usage cap since everything runs locally, though very large or very high-resolution images will take longer to process on lower-powered devices.
Frequently asked questions
Does the OCR engine download?
Yes — on first use about 2 MB of OCR data is downloaded to your browser, then cached.
Are my images uploaded?
No — OCR runs entirely on your device.
Why did the OCR get some characters wrong?
OCR matches character shapes statistically, so visually similar characters (0/O, l/1/I, rn/m) are the most common source of errors, especially in low-resolution or low-contrast images.
Does it support languages other than English?
Yes — pick the source language before scanning; each language uses its own trained model, so choosing the right one significantly improves accuracy.
Can it read handwriting?
It's optimized for printed text; handwriting recognition is far less reliable and works best only with very neat, clearly separated cursive or print handwriting.
Why is there a small download the first time I use it?
The recognition model (about 2 MB) has to load into your browser before it can run; after that first load it's cached, so later scans start instantly.
Is there a limit on image size or number of scans?
No hard limit — since recognition runs on your device rather than a server, you can process as many images as you like, though very large images take longer on slower hardware.
Will it preserve the original formatting, like tables or columns?
It extracts the text content and approximate line order, but complex layouts like multi-column pages or tables may need manual reformatting after extraction.
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