Image to Text Converter (OCR)
Extract text from an image, photo or screenshot with free OCR. Supports English, Hindi and 10 more languages. Runs in your browser, nothing uploaded.
Drop an image, or click to choose one
JPG, PNG, WebP, BMP or GIF. You can also paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V.
Files never leave your device
Processed entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded
No account required
No sign-up, no email, no usage counter
No file size limit
Bounded only by your own device memory
No watermarks
Your output comes back clean and unbranded
Your image is read in this browser tab and never uploaded. The OCR engine and its language file download once, the first time you use it.
About this tool
Image to Text reads the words in a photo, scan or screenshot and gives them back as editable text you can copy or save. It uses OCR (optical character recognition) through Tesseract, the open-source engine originally developed at HP and later maintained by Google, running inside your browser. Twelve languages are supported, including Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Chinese and Japanese as well as English and the main European languages. You can drop an image file or simply paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V. The image is never uploaded; only the OCR engine and the language file are downloaded the first time you use it.
How to Extract Text From an Image
- 1
Drop a JPG, PNG, WebP, BMP or GIF onto the page, click to pick one, or press Ctrl+V to paste a screenshot straight from the clipboard.
- 2
Choose the language the text is written in. Picking the right one matters: an English model reading Hindi produces nonsense, because each language has its own character set and word list.
- 3
Press Extract text. The first run downloads the engine and that language's data, then the text appears in an editable box. Fix anything the OCR misread, then copy it or download it as a .txt file.
How Large Text Must Be for Reliable OCR
Tesseract's own guidance is that accuracy falls off below 10 pt text scanned at 300 DPI, and drops sharply below 8 pt. The table converts that into the pixel height of the text in your image (one em, roughly the height of a capital letter plus its descender).
| Font size | Scanned at 150 DPI | Scanned at 200 DPI | Scanned at 300 DPI |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 pt | 17 px (unreliable) | 22 px (borderline) | 33 px (borderline) |
| 10 pt | 21 px (borderline) | 28 px (good) | 42 px (good) |
| 12 pt | 25 px (good) | 33 px (good) | 50 px (good) |
Why Use This Image to Text Converter
- Screenshots and Documents Stay Private
- People OCR bank statements, ID cards and chat screenshots. Here the recognition runs in your browser tab, so the image never reaches a server.
- Hindi and Non-Latin Scripts
- Besides seven Latin-script languages, it reads Hindi (Devanagari), Arabic, Russian (Cyrillic), Simplified Chinese and Japanese.
- Paste, Read, Copy
- Ctrl+V a screenshot, extract, and copy the result. No saving the screenshot as a file first, no account, no daily limit.
What People Use Image to Text For
- Copying Text From Screenshots
- Error messages, chat messages, slides in a video call: paste the screenshot and copy the words instead of retyping them.
- Digitising Printed Pages
- Photograph a page of a book, a notice or a receipt and turn it into text you can search, quote or translate.
- Pulling Details From Documents
- Get a name, address or reference number out of a scanned letter or form. For a multi-page scanned PDF, use OCR PDF, which makes the whole file searchable.
Tips for Better OCR Results
- Crop the image to just the text you need. Photos, logos and borders around it give the engine more to misread.
- Photograph documents flat and straight on. A page shot at an angle bends the lines, and accuracy drops quickly.
- Screenshots usually OCR almost perfectly because the text is sharp. Zoom in before taking the screenshot if the text is small.
- Check numbers, names and email addresses after extracting. OCR most often confuses 0 and O, 1 and l, and rn and m.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert an image to text for free?
Drop the image onto the converter above (or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V), choose the language, and press Extract text. The recognised text appears in a box where you can edit, copy or download it. It is free, needs no account and has no daily limit.
Is my image uploaded?
No. The OCR engine runs in your browser, so the image stays on your device. The only downloads are the engine itself and the language data, fetched once from a public CDN the first time you use a language.
Can it read handwriting?
Only neat, separated print, and even then unreliably. Tesseract is trained on printed fonts. Joined-up handwriting usually comes out as garbled text.
Why is the extracted text wrong or empty?
The usual causes are text that is too small or blurry, a photo taken at an angle, low contrast (grey text on a grey background), or the wrong language selected. Crop to the text, take the photo straight on in good light, and make sure the text is at least about 20 pixels tall in the image.
Does it keep the formatting?
It keeps line breaks and paragraph breaks, but not fonts, colours, tables or columns. For a scanned PDF where you want the layout preserved, use OCR PDF or PDF to Word.
Which languages are supported?
English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Japanese. Pick the language of the text before extracting; one image is read in one language at a time.