How to Copy Text from an Image: Online, Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android

To extract text from an image, run it through OCR (optical character recognition) and copy the result. The quickest way depends on where the image is:

• Any device, any image file → upload it to JPG to text or PNG to text and click Copy
• Windows → Snipping Tool's Text actions, or PowerToys Text Extractor (Win + Shift + T)
• Mac, iPhone or iPad → Live Text: select the text in the photo like you would on a web page
• Android → Google Lens in Google Photos or the camera
• Need the text in Word → JPG to Word gives you an editable DOCX

Below is each method step by step, plus what to do with screenshots, non-English text and many images at once.

How to Extract Text from an Image Online

This works on any computer or phone, with no app to install. The image is uploaded over HTTPS and recognised on our servers.

1. Open JPG to text for photos or PNG to text for screenshots
2. Upload the image
3. Wait a few seconds — the recognised text appears on the page
4. Click Copy to put it on your clipboard, or download it as a .txt file

The instant "to text" pages have a document language menu with 29 languages, the same as JPG to TXT and PNG to TXT, which give you the text as a file. On Automatic, the script is recognised for you — Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Korean, Chinese or Japanese — and the matching model reads the text. If you know the language, pick it; for Traditional Chinese, choose Chinese (Traditional).

Got an iPhone photo in HEIC format? Convert it with HEIC to JPG first — the image-to-text tools take JPG and PNG.

Several images? The TXT and Word pages accept more than one file at a time, process them one after another and offer Download all as ZIP. If you'd rather have all images in one document — say, photos of consecutive pages — put them in a ZIP and use multiple JPGs to Word. Pages follow the file names, so name them 01.jpg, 02.jpg and so on.

How to Copy Text from an Image on PC (Windows)

Windows has three options that work on your PC without uploading anything.

Snipping Tool: Text Actions (Windows 11)

1. Press Win + Shift + S and select the area with the text, or open an image in Snipping Tool
2. Click the snip notification to open it in Snipping Tool
3. Click the Text actions button in the toolbar
4. Choose Copy all text, or select just the lines you need and press Ctrl + C

PowerToys Text Extractor

If you install Microsoft's free PowerToys, enable Text Extractor. Then press Win + Shift + T anywhere, drag a box over the text on screen — an image, a video frame, a locked PDF — and the text lands on your clipboard. It's the fastest way to copy text from an image on a PC when you do it often.

OneNote

Paste or insert the image into a OneNote page, right-click it and choose Copy Text from Picture. Handy if you already keep notes there.

How to Copy Text from an Image on Mac

On a Mac with macOS Monterey or later, Live Text is built in:

1. Open the image in Preview or Photos (Quick Look with the space bar works too)
2. Move the pointer over the text — it turns into a text cursor
3. Drag to select the text and press Cmd + C

For a screenshot, press Cmd + Shift + 4, drag over the area, click the thumbnail that appears, and select the text there.

Image to Text on iPhone and iPad

Live Text works on iPhone with iOS 15 or later:

• In Photos: open the picture and tap the Live Text icon (a small box with lines) in the corner. Touch and hold a word, drag the handles and tap Copy — or tap Copy All
• In the Camera: point it at the text, tap the Live Text icon when it appears, and copy what you need
• In Notes: tap the camera button and choose Scan Text to drop text straight into a note

Live Text is great for a few lines. For a full page you want to keep and edit, the online route with a Word or TXT download is more practical.

Google Lens Image to Text (Android and Chrome)

1. Open the photo in Google Photos and tap Lens, or open Google Lens and point the camera at the text
2. Tap Text (or tap the text directly) to highlight it
3. Select the part you want and tap Copy text

On phones with Circle to Search, long-press the home button or navigation bar, circle the text on screen and copy it. In the Chrome desktop browser, right-click an image and choose Search with Google Lens to get the same text selection.

Extract Text from an Image with Google Docs

Google Docs can OCR an image stored in Google Drive:

1. Upload the image to Google Drive
2. Right-click it and choose Open with → Google Docs
3. A new document opens with the image at the top and the recognised text below it

It's free and fine for simple pages. Expect fonts, columns and tables to be flattened, and check that the text came through in the right order.

How to Convert an Image to Text in Word

Word can't read text inside a picture you've inserted — it treats the image as a graphic. To get editable text in Word:

1. Upload the image to JPG to Word
2. Pick the document language from the menu, or leave it on Automatic to have the script recognised
3. Download the DOCX and open it in Word

Lines printed larger come through as Word heading styles and bulleted or numbered lists as list styles, so you can restyle the whole document at once instead of fixing it line by line. Table-like rows that line up in columns are rebuilt as a Word table. Screenshots saved as PNG go through PNG to Word, which has the same language menu. For scanned PDFs rather than images, OCR essentials walks through the PDF version of the same job.

How to Copy Text from a Screenshot

Screenshots are the easiest images to OCR: the text is perfectly straight, sharp and high-contrast. Use PNG to text and copy the result. A few habits help:

• Save as PNG, not JPG. PNG keeps letter edges crisp; JPG compression blurs small text
• Crop to the text you need. Menus, icons and toolbars around it add stray words
• Zoom in before you capture tiny text. A screenshot of 9-pixel text gives the engine very little to work with
• Capture one column at a time from multi-column pages, so lines don't get interleaved

Which Method Should You Use?

Whichever you use, the output format decides what you can do next — our guide to OCR output formats compares TXT, Word and searchable PDF.

Tips for Cleaner Text from Photos

• Shoot straight on so lines are horizontal, not trapezoid-shaped
• Use even light — shadows across the page and glare on glossy paper hide letters
• Fill the frame with the text rather than zooming later
• Check numbers and names after copying — 0/O, 1/l/I and rn/m are the classic mix-ups

When the Extracted Text Comes Out Wrong

• Wrong letters in one line of the image → a line in a different script from the rest is read with the main language's model; crop it and run it separately
• Odd characters in Traditional Chinese → choose Chinese (Traditional) in the language menu
• Lines from two columns mixed together → crop each column and run them separately
• Missing words → the text was too small, faint or low-contrast; retake the photo closer and in better light
• Handwritten notes → OCR is trained on printed text, so expect poor results on cursive

Summary

The quickest way to extract text from an image is the tool already on your device — Live Text, Google Lens or Snipping Tool — for a line or two. For a whole page, a non-English document or many images, upload to JPG to text or its TXT and Word versions, pick the document language, and copy or download the result.

Related Tools

• JPG to text — read a photo and copy the text from the page
• PNG to text — copy text from a screenshot
• JPG to TXT — text file with a choice of 29 languages
• JPG to Word — editable DOCX with headings and lists
• Multiple JPGs to Word — several photos in one document
• HEIC to JPG — convert iPhone photos first