Textinator For Mac

Optical character recognition is getting more advanced by the day, but you also need a quick and convenient way to use this technology in order to make it worthwhile.

Textinator aims to offer just that, enabling you to use the macOS screenshot function as a way to detect and extract text from anything on your screen. It copies any text identified in screenshots to the clipboard, it supports multiple languages, and it is completely free and open-source.

First of all, you will need to grant the app full disk access from. If you aren’t prompted to do so, just go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access, drop the app in the list, and make sure the box is checked.

Once configured, the app will be integrated with the screenshot function in macOS. When capturing a screenshot, it will be scanned automatically, and any text it detects will be sent to the clipboard. It’s worth noting that snapshots seem to be processed again after being renamed or moved to a different location, as the software probably sees them as new images.

Textinator already has support for quite a few languages, and more may be added in the future. You can set it up to always detect English even when a different language is selected, which can be helpful when working with several types of content.

You can change the confidence threshold as well, which determines how lenient the detection algorithm will be. High confidence may lead to some text being ignored, while low confidence may result in mistakes and false detections.

Since the app uses Apple’s own OCR technology, the results are as accurate as can reasonably be expected. What really makes Textinator stand out is the ease with which you can extract and use text from anywhere on your screen. It may be a simple app, but it’s a very useful one.