How to Extract Text from Images with Free OCR (2026)
Use in-browser OCR to extract text from screenshots, photos, and scanned documents. 12 languages supported. No upload, 100% private.
- Use in-browser OCR to extract text from screenshots, photos, and scanned documents.
- What Is OCR?.
- How Browser-Based OCR Works.
- Covers tips for better ocr accuracy.
- Covers practical use cases.
What Is OCR?
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) converts images of text into machine-readable text that you can select, search, copy, and edit. The technology has existed since the 1950s, but modern OCR engines use neural networks trained on millions of text images to achieve accuracy rates above 95% on clean printed text. The Image OCR tool uses Tesseract.js — an open-source OCR engine maintained by Google — running entirely in your browser. Unlike cloud-based OCR services, your images never leave your device.
How Browser-Based OCR Works
Tesseract.js is a WebAssembly port of the Tesseract C++ engine. When you select a language, the tool downloads a trained model file (about 15 MB for English) from a CDN. This model contains the neural network weights for recognizing characters in that language. The model is cached in your browser, so subsequent uses don't require a re-download. Processing happens entirely on your CPU — there are no API calls, no server processing, and no upload of your images. The tradeoff is speed: browser-based OCR is slower than cloud services, typically taking 5-15 seconds per page depending on complexity and device.
Tips for Better OCR Accuracy
Image quality is the single biggest factor in OCR accuracy. Crop the image to show only the text region — background noise, logos, and images confuse the engine. High contrast matters: dark text on a light background works best. Avoid images with text smaller than 12px equivalent. Straighten rotated or skewed text before processing. For multi-column layouts, process each column separately. For handwritten text, accuracy drops significantly — OCR works best on printed fonts. If the result has errors, the extracted text is editable in the output area, so you can correct mistakes before copying.
background-size animation or @property registered custom properties instead.Practical Use Cases
Screenshots: extract error messages, code snippets, or configuration from screenshots shared in Slack or email. Printed documents: photograph a page from a book, receipt, or form and convert it to editable text. Whiteboards: capture meeting notes from a whiteboard photo. Business cards: extract contact information from a photographed business card. PDFs: while the PDF OCR tool handles PDF files directly, the Image OCR tool works on screenshots or photos of PDF pages. Academic research: extract quotes from scanned journal articles or book pages.