As an active user, I would like to think of it like having a super-smart assistant who can look at any text – even in pictures or scanned documents – and read it out loud to you.
It's pretty magical when you think about it! The OCR part (that's Optical Character Recognition) is like giving your computer the ability to "see" and understand text in images, just like we do.
What Can You Use It For?
It's super handy for lots of everyday stuff:
Copying text from pictures or screenshots
Grabbing words from videos (like those recipe videos where they show ingredients too quickly!)
Turning old scanned papers into text you can actually use
In this post, we offer you the best open-source free screen OCR apps that can help you boost your productivity on Windows, Linux and macOS.
TRex as its name suggest a TRex from stone age to a simple yet power screen reader and ocr for macOS apps. It can work directly from the menubar as a small app, support global hotkeys, and works smoothly on all modern macOS versions.
If you are looking for a feature-rich app for more tasks, and options, ShareX is your way to go. It is a Windows app that comes with dozens of features not just to capture, but also to edit your screenshots then upload it to several platforms of your choice.
Interested in looking into its amazing features? Look up here.
dpScreenOCR is a program to recognize text on the screen. The app is powered by Tesseract, it supports more than 100 languages and can split independent text blocks, such as columns.
macOCR is a command line app that enables you to turn any text on your screen into text on your clipboard. When you envoke the ocr command, a "screen capture" like cursor is shown. Any text within the bounds will be converted to text.
It integrates well with several macOS apps such Alfred, LunchBar, Hammerspoon, Quicksilver, Raycast and many more.
This is a simple Python application that captures screenshots and performs optical character recognition (OCR) on the text within the image.
The OCR result is then printed out for easy access to the text contained within the screenshot. The user can use this tool to quickly and easily extract text from screenshots without the need for manual typing.
It uses Tesseract for OCR, and it may not give accurate results.
A simple Python-written OCR for Windows and Linux. It supports many languages out of the box, and can work as a PDF OCR app, with image files and supports batch operations.
This app is available for Windows and Linux systems.
Features
Free : All codes of this project are open source and completely free.
Convenient : unzip and use, run offline, no network required.
Efficient : It comes with a highly efficient offline OCR engine and built-in multi-language recognition library.
Flexible : supports external calling methods such as command line and HTTP interface.
Function : Screenshot OCR / Batch OCR / PDF recognition / QR code / Formula recognition
Capture2Text enables users to quickly OCR a portion of the screen using a keyboard shortcut. The resulting text will be saved to the clipboard by default.
It is ready to be used for Windows users, as it works smoothly on Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Parsr, is a simple yet powerful minimal-footprint document (image, pdf, docx, eml) cleaning, parsing and extraction toolchain which generates readily available, organized and usable data in JSON, Markdown (MD), CSV/Pandas DF or TXT formats.
It can be installed locally or on a remote server, using Docker.
STL a.k.a Screen Translate is an OCR translator tool made by utilizing Tesseract and opencv-python. The code is then compiled to .exe by using pyinstaller.
It is ideal for visually impaired individuals, language learners, professionals handling multilingual or inaccessible content.
Features
OCR Detection: Extracts text from images, PDFs, and screenshots using Tesseract OCR.
Multi-Language Translation: Integrates with Google Translate, LibreTranslate, MyMemory, DeepL, and PONS for instant translations.
Snip and Translate: Select and translate specific screen areas in real-time.
Capture and Translate: Capture screen content and translate it in one step.
Screen Reader Support: Narrates detected and translated text, compatible with popular screen readers.
Voice Narration: Reads text aloud for enhanced accessibility.
Customizable Language Preferences: Set default input and output languages for seamless translations.
Translation History: Stores translations for future reference.
Offline OCR: Recognizes text without an internet connection.
Batch Processing: Handles multiple files or screenshots for OCR and translation in bulk.
Hotkey Integration: Enables quick capture and translate actions with keyboard shortcuts.
Text Export: Save outputs in formats like .txt, .docx, or PDF.
Multi-Platform Support: Works on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
Dark Mode: Comfortable viewing with a dark theme option.
Scribe OCR is a free and open-source web application designed for recognizing text from images, proofreading OCR data, and creating fully digitized documents.
Hazem Abbas
ShareX
