Free online image to text converter for a screenshot, a photo or a scan. Add the image, choose the OCR language, press Run OCR Extraction, then copy the text or download a .txt file.
OCR and text recognition by OnlinePCApps since 2013
Text locked inside a picture cannot be copied, searched or edited. The free online image to text converter pulls the words out and returns plain text.
Copying a quote, a code snippet or an address out of a screenshot by hand is slow and error-prone. The converter returns the words in one run, ready to paste instead of typed out line by line.
A scanned page is only a picture until its words are extracted. The text that comes back can be searched, quoted and dropped into a document, which is the first step in digitizing paper records.
An invoice, an ID or a contract read by OCR should not pass through an outside server. Tesseract runs in the browser, so the image stays on the device while the text is read from it.
Drag a PNG, JPG, WEBP or BMP onto the panel, or click to browse. It takes one image per run and shows the name and size. A sharp, high-contrast image of printed text gives the best result.
English is on by default. Select any of nine language buttons, more than one for a mixed page, or open Custom language codes and type codes joined with plus signs, like eng+spa+fra. Then press Run OCR Extraction.
The text lands in an editable box with the language, a confidence percentage and a word count. Fix any word, then press Copy Text or Download .txt. The file is named after the image with -ocr added.
To convert an image to text is to extract its printed words as plain text. Here that means a language choice, a run button and a box of editable results.
Upload Image takes a PNG, JPG, WEBP or BMP by click or drop, up to 100 MB. The file name and size show above the language buttons, and Change File swaps the image.
Nine buttons cover English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. Several can be on together for a mixed page, and Custom language codes takes any codes joined with plus signs.
After Run OCR Extraction the result line shows the language, a confidence percentage and a word count. A low score marks an image worth re-shooting or cleaning before the text is used.
The extracted text sits in an editable box to correct and reuse. Copy Text sends it to the clipboard and Download .txt saves a file named after the image, ready for a document, a note or a search.
To extract text from an image, to run OCR on a screenshot and to convert a picture to text all name one task. A search for image to text or OCR online reaches this page, and the image stays as it was.
The image decides what the online image to text converter returns. Results run from clean to not on this page, and the notes say which.
| The case | Result | What happens and why |
|---|---|---|
| Printed text | clean | A screenshot or a sharp scan of printed type is what the online image to text converter suits. The confidence line shows how a run went. |
| Languages | 9 buttons | English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese, with Custom language codes for more. |
| Mixed languages | supported | Turn on more than one button, or type codes like eng+spa+fra, for a page that holds two languages. |
| Image formats | 4 listed | The panel lists PNG, JPG, WEBP and BMP. The drop zone caps a file at 100 MB. |
| Several images | not on this page | The panel takes one image per run. Process Another Image clears the result for the next one. |
| Handwriting | check it | The panel makes no handwriting claim. Test a short sample and watch the confidence line before relying on the result. |
| Skew and rotation | check it | The panel has no rotate or clean controls, so straighten a tilted photo before it goes in. |
| Multi-column | check it | A two-column page can come back across the columns instead of down them. Split the columns into separate images if the order is off. |
| Tables | text only | The words in a table come back as plain text. The panel has no grid or table output. |
| Text file | UTF-8 .txt | Download .txt saves plain text as UTF-8, so accented letters and other scripts open correctly in a text editor. Character encoding explained and why text arrives broken covers the rest. |
| Where it runs | on the device | The text is read in the browser, so the image is not uploaded. |
How an Image Becomes Text
OCR, or optical character recognition, matches the shapes of letters in an image to characters. The language buttons in the panel use codes like eng, spa, hin and chi_sim, the three-letter naming that Tesseract, the open-source OCR engine, follows. Custom language codes takes any of them joined with plus signs. After a run the panel shows the language, a confidence percentage and a word count, and the text arrives in an editable box. Clean printed type, sharp focus and strong contrast give the best results. Handwriting, a dim photo, tiny type and a crowded layout all lower accuracy, so check the text against the image before it is used. Download .txt saves plain UTF-8 text. The references below define the engine, the codes and the file.
Both turn an image into text. The trade is between a free online image to text page and a cloud service with extras.
| Point of comparison | This tool This online converter On the device | Cloud OCR Uploaded and read on a server |
|---|---|---|
| Where the image goes | Stays on the device | Uploaded to a server |
| Price and caps | Free with no sign-up | Free tier often capped |
| Handwriting | Not promised | AI models handle cursive |
| Keep table structure | Text without the grid | Rows and columns kept |
| Thousands of pages | One image per run | Server farms at scale |
Cloud services win on handwriting, kept tables and volume. On price the free converter wins, with no sign-up and no watermark, and it returns editable text with a confidence score. Online file tools and whether yours uploads weighs the rest of the trade.
The image is read inside the browser by Tesseract compiled to WebAssembly, so the recognition is client-side and the file stays on the machine that opened it. The language data downloads once from a CDN, and no image is passed to a server for the job.
An image read by OCR is often a private thing, an invoice, an ID, a contract or a medical letter never meant for an outside server. A cloud OCR service has to upload the image to read it, far more exposure than pulling out some text is worth.
All of these pull text from an image. They differ on effort, on cost and on where the file goes.
Phone tools suit a quick grab, cloud APIs charge per page and desktop apps need an install. The online image to text converter above takes a screenshot or a scan and returns editable text with nothing to set up.
Three points set how clean the text from an online image to text run comes back.
Accuracy rises with a high-resolution, well-lit image where the text contrasts strongly with the background. A blurry photo, a dim scan or tiny type lowers the confidence score, so a sharp source is worth the effort.
The panel makes no handwriting claim. Printed type is what OCR handles best. Cursive and loose handwriting often come back garbled. For handwritten notes, test a sample first or use a service built for handwriting.
Selecting the language of the text sharpens the result. English is on by default, so turn it off or add buttons for a page in another language. Custom language codes joined with plus signs cover a mixed page.
The online image to text page converts one image per run, which fits a screenshot or a scan. A folder of hundreds of pages, or scans that need heavy cleanup and deskewing first, belongs to the desktop edition, which works from disk and converts the entire set in one pass.
Point it at a folder of scans and every one is converted to its own text file in a single run, saved beside the source.
Deskew, denoise and threshold a batch of poor scans before conversion, the preprocessing that lifts accuracy on hard pages.
Saved presets set the languages and the cleanup steps once, ready for a repeated workflow.
No sign-up, no watermark and no cost. Add an image to the online image to text converter, press Run OCR Extraction and copy the text or download a .txt file.