Copying text out of a screenshot on a Mac
macOS Live Text already copies text from images and paused video frames, free, in Preview, Photos, Quick Look and Safari. TextSniper is $9.99 once on the Mac App Store. CleanShot X is $35 once. Vocemo grabs text from a selected screen region for $15 a month.
- macOS Live Text
- Free, built in since macOS 12
- TextSniper
- $9.99 once on the Mac App Store
- CleanShot X
- $35 once, Pro $10 a user a month
- Where paid tools help
- One shortcut, any region, no saved file
Can macOS already copy text from a screenshot?
Yes, and this is the honest starting point for the whole subject. Live Text has been part of macOS since macOS 12, and Apple documents it in the Preview and Photos user guides. Open an image that contains text, hover the pointer over the words, and they behave like text. You can select them, copy them, look them up, translate them or click a phone number.
It works in Preview, in Photos, in Quick Look when you press the space bar on a file in Finder, and on images inside Safari. It runs on the machine, with no account and nothing uploaded, and it costs nothing because you already paid for it with the Mac.
Any article that sells you an OCR app without telling you this is wasting your money. Most people who go looking for a text extraction tool need the feature they already have.
How do you copy text from a screenshot on a Mac, step by step?
- Take the screenshot with Shift, Command and 4, then drag over the area. It lands on the desktop.
- Select the file in Finder and press the space bar to open Quick Look.
- Move the pointer over the text. When the cursor changes to a text cursor, drag across the words and press Command C.
If Quick Look does not offer selection, open the file in Preview instead, which always does. For a screenshot you have just taken, you can also click the thumbnail that appears in the corner, which opens it in the markup window where Live Text also works.
One useful variation: Shift, Command, Control and 4 copies the region straight to the clipboard without writing a file. Paste it into Preview with Command N and select the text from there. That keeps your desktop clean.
Can you get text out of a video frame?
Yes. Pause the video on the frame you want, in QuickTime Player or in Safari, and the text on the paused frame becomes selectable in the same way. This works on a paused local file and on a paused video in a web page. It is the fastest way to get a command out of a screen recording or a tutorial without typing it back by hand.
If a player does not support it, take a screenshot of the paused frame and use Live Text on the screenshot. The result is identical.
When is Live Text not enough?
There are real gaps, and they are gaps of workflow rather than of recognition quality.
- It needs the image somewhere that supports it. You cannot point at an arbitrary rectangle of your screen and get text. You capture, you open, then you select. That is three steps, and if you do it forty times a day it is annoying.
- Selection is fiddly on structured text. Dragging across a table, a two column PDF page or a code block often picks up the wrong reading order.
- There is no batch. A folder of two hundred scanned pages has to be opened one at a time.
- It is a selection, not a capture. There is no keyboard shortcut that turns a region of the screen into clipboard text in one action.
That last point is what every paid tool in this category is actually selling. The recognition underneath is often the same recognition Apple ships. What you buy is one keystroke instead of three.
What do the Mac text grabbing tools cost?
Prices verified September 2026, from each vendor's own page, in US dollars.
| Option | Runs on your Mac | What you get | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| macOS Live Text | Yes | Select text in an image you have opened | Free |
| macOS screenshot plus Preview | Yes | Capture, open, select, copy | Free |
| TextSniper | Yes | One shortcut, drag a region, text on the clipboard | $9.99 once |
| CleanShot X Basic | Yes | Screenshots, recording, annotation, text grab, one year of updates | $35 once, optional $19 a year after |
| CleanShot X Pro | App local, cloud for sharing | Adds unlimited cloud storage, custom domain, team features | $10 a user a month, billed annually |
| Vocemo | Yes | Text from a screen region, plus dictation, transcription and 21 document jobs | $15 a month, or $144 a year |
If you would rather this ran on your own Mac, that is what Vocemo does. Free for 7 days, then $15 a month for 3 Macs.
Download free for MacRead that table as a ladder, not a contest. If you want a keyboard shortcut that grabs a region of the screen as text, TextSniper at $9.99 once is the cheapest thing that will ever do the job, and nothing here beats it on price. CleanShot X at $35 makes sense if you also annotate and record. A subscription only makes sense if text grabbing is one of several things you need.
What the local option does not do
Vocemo's screen tool grabs text from a region you select, and it is honest to say what that is not.
- It is not a screenshot app. No annotation, no arrows, no blur tool, no scrolling capture, no shareable link. CleanShot X owns that ground.
- It does not beat macOS at recognition. The text recognition built into macOS is strong, and for printed text on a clean background you should expect the same result you would get free.
- Handwriting is unreliable. Printed and typeset text is read well. Cursive handwriting is not, in any tool on this page.
- Complex layout comes back flattened. A table becomes lines of text, not cells. Reading order in a multi column page can be wrong.
- Apple silicon and macOS 13 or later. The installer is 5.5 MB and a feature downloads what it needs the first time you use it, then shuts that model down after 120 seconds of sitting idle.
The reason to have it is if you also want dictation, transcription, read aloud and document conversion from the same app on the same terms, which is the general argument for running this work on your own machine. For text grabbing on its own, it is not the cheap answer, and pretending otherwise would be silly.
How do you tell whether a text grabber is uploading your screenshots?
This matters more here than people assume, because the things you photograph on screen are frequently the sensitive ones: a bank statement, an error message with a token in it, a patient record, a contract, a colleague's message. A tool that quietly posts the region to a server is posting exactly that.
The quickest test is to turn off Wi-Fi, unplug Ethernet, disconnect any tethered iPhone, quit the app, reopen it and grab some text. If it still works, the recognition happened on your Mac. That test and its limits are covered in more detail in this guide to checking what an app sends.
Apple's Live Text passes that test by construction, which is another reason to start with the free option and only pay when you hit a wall you can name.
Questions
How do I copy text from a screenshot on a Mac?
Take the screenshot with Shift, Command and 4, then select the file in Finder and press the space bar to open Quick Look. Hover the pointer over the words until the cursor changes, drag across them and press Command C. If Quick Look will not select, open the image in Preview, which always supports it.
Does macOS have built in OCR?
Yes. Live Text has been part of macOS since macOS 12 and Apple documents it in the Preview and Photos user guides. It recognises text in images in Preview, Photos, Quick Look and Safari, runs on the machine, and costs nothing. For most people it removes the need for a separate app entirely.
How much does TextSniper cost?
TextSniper is $9.99 as a one time purchase on the US Mac App Store, checked September 2026, and requires macOS 10.15 or later. What you get for that is a keyboard shortcut that turns any region of the screen straight into clipboard text, without saving a file or opening an app first.
Is TextSniper worth it when Live Text is free?
Only if the three step flow is costing you time. Live Text does the recognition just as well, but it needs the image captured and opened somewhere that supports selection. If you grab text dozens of times a day, one shortcut instead of three steps is worth $9.99. If you do it twice a week, it is not.
How much does CleanShot X cost in 2026?
CleanShot Basic is $35 as a one time purchase and includes the full Mac app and one year of updates, with an optional renewal at $19 a year, from CleanShot's own pricing page checked September 2026. CleanShot Pro is $10 per user a month billed annually and adds unlimited cloud storage, a custom domain and team features.
Can I extract text from a video on a Mac?
Yes. Pause the video on the frame you want in QuickTime Player or in Safari, then select the text on the paused frame the same way you would in an image. If the player does not support selection, screenshot the paused frame and use Live Text on the screenshot instead.
Sources
Every price on this page was read from the vendor's own page on the date shown above. Prices change; if you find one out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Competitor prices in this article were checked in September 2026. Prices change; if you find one out of date, write to us and we will correct it.