TextSniper

TextSniper is the macOS app that turns any image on screen into selectable text: non-editable PDFs, paused videos, screenshots, app windows — everything becomes copyable text with a keyboard shortcut and OCR technology.

TextSniper is a macOS application for real-time optical character recognition (OCR). It works instantly: you press the keyboard shortcut (default Cmd+Shift+2), drag a rectangle around the text you want to extract from anywhere on screen, and the recognized text is automatically copied to the clipboard. It doesn't matter where the text comes from — a modification-protected PDF, a paused YouTube video, an image, an app window that doesn't allow selection, a QR code — TextSniper extracts it and makes it available as plain text. It supports over 50 languages and includes a continuous capture mode to extract text from multiple areas in sequence. It's particularly useful for transcribing text from presentations, extracting content from scanned PDFs, reading software activation codes shown on screen and copying text from any visual source. It's only available for macOS and distributed via Setapp or the Mac App Store.

For macOS users who work with documents, PDFs, videos or images and need to quickly extract text from any visual source on screen without manually typing it.

TextSniper costs $7.99 per year purchased directly from the app (renewable annual license). It's also available through Setapp ($9.99/month for a macOS app bundle). A free trial is available from the official site. It's only available for macOS.