Capture any text on your Mac's screen and...

Grab any text on the screen, convert images or scans to searchable PDFs, open QR-coded URLs, integrate via CLI, access with Finder Extensions and more!

4.8/5.0 average

screenshot of owlocr with line spacing 1.0 resulting in some unnecessary paragraph breaks

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Exclusively for macOS.

At its best on macOS 13 (Ventura). Requires macOS 10.15 or newer.

How does it work?

Glad you asked. Couldn't be easier.

Easy and instant

1. Press Cmd+F1 or select screen capture from the menubar.

2. Select area on screen.

3. Paste text (Cmd+V) anywhere.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is used to extract text from the screen area. This technology works even when the text is embedded in a video, image or application.

The processing is done right on your Mac for near instantenous, accurate results while preserving your privacy.

Privacy secured

Your screenshots and files never leave your machine.

The text recognition algorithm that is used has been developed by Apple and is a part of your macOS operating system and is only run on your device.

OwlOCR never asks for any of your personal information or your data.

Adapts to your workflow

OwlOCR can be used with screenshots, images, PDF files or even using your iOS device camera.

OwlOCR processing can easily be started with customizable keyboard shortcuts, through the menubar, by using Finder extensions or via command line interface.

Create searchable PDFs

Any inputs can be exported to searchable PDFs.

1. Drag and drop the non-searchable files into OwlOCR - or take screenshots / iOS scans.

2. Run text recognition and export.

3. Exported PDF includes invisible text layers that can be searched by most PDF readers.

Get started free

Download below.

No sign-ups or registrations necessary. No spam emails.
Promise.

Core

Free Forever

Unlimited high quality text recognition on-device securely and incredibly fast
Grab a screen area for instant OCR and results copied to clipboard
Grab multiple areas of your screen for instant OCR and concatenated results copied to clipboard
Use Finder Extensions to trigger main use cases right from Finder
Drag and drop documents to the app to convert to text
OCR page-by-page in multi-page documents
Take a photo or scan documents with your iOS device, directly from the app
Export searchable PDFs
Export OCR results to text files
Scan QR codes and barcodes and easily open encoded URLs
Superpower your process by integrating via command line
Custom dictionary
Line spacing and word wrapping options
Keyboard shortcut Cmd + F1 (configurable) for a screen grab
Keyboard shortcut Cmd + F2 (configurable) for multiple screen grabs
Notifications on OCR completion
Input filetypes supported: PDF, PNG, JPEG, GIF, HEIC
Language support under macOS 13: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Ukrainian and Russian.
Language support under macOS 11: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.
Language support under macOS 10.15: English.
Many customization options like Menu Bar -only mode, screenshot sounds, storage directories and more
Apple Silicon, Dark Mode and macOS Monterey support

Pro

$4.99 per year, or $9.99 lifetime for a lifetime license

All Core Features
Batch OCR multi-page PDFs or multiple images files in a single fast run, using all your CPU cores
Batch process multiple files in a single go right from Finder using Finder Extensions
Use multiple screenshot feature to capture up to 20 concatenated screenshots
Configure post-processing rules for Find/Replace behaviour and Smart Quotes substitution
License is enabled for your Apple ID with Family Sharing allowed

Pro trial for 21 days is automatically started on installation. No registration required.

* Prices vary by region of the Mac App Store.