TextGrabber2 For Mac

You can find lots of apps that extract text from images, and quite accurately. But if you just want to grab some text from a document or web page, you often have to grab a screenshot, put it through text detection, and then delete it.

With TextGrabber2, you can skip the middleman and just extract text directly, without any screenshots. Any image copied to the clipboard, including with the macOS screen to clipboard command, will be processed for extractable text.

The simplest way to use the app is with the macOS Cmd-Control-Shift-4 command, which allows you to select an area of the screen that will be copied to the clipboard. This hotkey can be remapped, which might be a good idea if you use it frequently.

Once the image is in the clipboard, TextGrabber2 will analyze it and extract any identifiable text. The app uses Apple’s Vision framework, which works locally and offers a high level of accuracy. It should have no problem detecting text from most sources.

If the text you want to capture is shown on multiple lines, that’s exactly how it will be extracted. Each line can be extracted separately by just clicking it in the app’s menu, which you’ll access from the menu bar.

However, you can also copy all of the lines and paste them together, either with like breaks or with spaces. This enables you to extract long passages and paste them exactly as they appear in the source.

TextGrabber2 is nothing if not efficient. It’s lightweight, uses Apple’s built-in text detection framework, and runs entirely in the menu bar. You can use it with existing macOS shortcuts, and it lets you extract text without creating unnecessary image files. It doesn’t have any settings to configure, but there probably isn’t much you’d want to customize anyway.