Image to Text Converter – Copy Text from a Picture (OCR) Free

How to Get the Text from an Image

Add the picture – Drop a photo, scan or screenshot (JPG, PNG, WEBP, TIFF, GIF, BMP) into the box, or press Ctrl+V to paste a screenshot. Several images become several pages.
Choose the languages – Tick the languages of the text – up to four, for example Arabic and English together.
Extract the text – Click "Extract text". The text is recognized on our server, usually within a few seconds per image.
Copy or save – Copy the text with one click, save it as a .txt file, or download a searchable PDF of the image.

What You Get

Editable text – Real text you can paste into Word, an e-mail or a chat, instead of retyping it.
Arabic and mixed languages – Available languages: العربية, বাংলা, Български, Čeština, 简体中文, 繁體中文, Deutsch, Ελληνικά, English, فارسی, Français, עברית, हिन्दी, Magyar, Bahasa Indonesia, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, Bahasa Melayu, Nederlands, Polski, Português, Română, Русский, Español, Svenska, ไทย, Türkçe, Українська, اردو, Tiếng Việt. Arabic and English in the same picture are read together, and right-to-left text keeps its reading order.
Screenshots and phone photos – Sideways photos are turned upright automatically, and screenshots can be pasted straight from the clipboard.
A searchable PDF as well – If you also need the image as a document, download it as a PDF in which the text can be searched and selected.

When It Helps

Copying a quote, a phone number or an address from a photo or a screenshot.
Getting the text of a photographed letter, a printed form or a book page into Word.
Using the text of a picture for a translation or in an AI chat.
Reading the text of a whiteboard or a presentation slide you photographed.

Good to Know

Sharp, well-lit pictures give the best results: photograph the page from straight above and avoid shadows and reflections.
Small or blurry text, decorative fonts and handwriting are recognized less reliably – check names and numbers in the result.
The layout is not kept: the result is plain text, line by line. For a document with its layout, use Scanned PDF to Word.
HEIC photos from an iPhone must be saved as JPG first.
Text recognition runs on our server: the images are uploaded over an encrypted connection and deleted as soon as you have the result, after one hour at the latest.

Image to Text – Frequently Asked Questions

How do I copy text from an image?

Add the image (or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V), choose the languages and click "Extract text". The recognized text appears below the result – click "Copy".

Can it read Arabic text in images?

Yes. Choose Arabic (and English if the picture contains both); the text is recognized in the right reading order. Clear, printed text works best.

Can I convert several images at once?

Yes. Select several images together: each one becomes a page, and the text of all pages is shown one after the other.

Does it work with screenshots?

Yes. Press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac) on this page to paste a screenshot, or save it as a PNG file and add the file.

Can OCR read handwriting?

Only clear block letters, and not reliably. OCR is made for printed text.

Are my images stored?

No. They are uploaded over an encrypted connection only for the recognition and deleted as soon as you have the result, after one hour at the latest.

Is it free?

Yes – no sign-up and no watermark.

Related tools: OCR PDF for scanned PDF documents, Images to PDF to combine pictures into a PDF, and PDF to Text for PDFs that already contain text.

Explore the full collection of tools in the Image Tools.

Image to Text – Extract Text from Photos and Screenshots

OCR Settings

Continue Working with Extracted Text & Scanned PDFs