How to copy text from a photo or picture
- Tap "Choose pictures" or drop JPG, PNG, WebP or iPhone (HEIC) photos onto the box. You can add several at once.
- Check the languages the text is written in. The first time, allow the one-time download of the text reader (about 3 MB with English).
- Tap "Read the text", then Copy all, or download the text as a .txt file.
Good to know
The text is read by Tesseract, a well-known open-source text reader, running inside your browser. It and the languages you choose are downloaded once from our site (about 3 MB with English, then about 0.5 to 2 MB per extra language), and your browser keeps them, so they aren’t downloaded again. Your pictures never leave your device.
It reads printed text best: a sharp, straight, well-lit photo of a page, a scan, or a screenshot. Handwriting is not read reliably. Tables and columns come out as plain lines of text. Small, blurry, curved or shadowed text gives more mistakes, and similar letters such as 0 and O or 1 and l can be mixed up, so check names, numbers and amounts against the picture.
A picture holding a full page of text took about 4 to 10 seconds on our 2-core test computer, and takes longer on a phone. For a scanned PDF, use Make PDF searchable, which reads every page and keeps the PDF as it is.
Questions
Are my pictures uploaded?
No. The text is read by your browser on your phone or computer. Only the text reader itself is downloaded from our site, once.
Can it read handwriting?
Not reliably. It is made for printed and typed text. Neat handwritten capitals are sometimes read, but expect mistakes.
Which languages can it read?
English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Indonesian, Arabic, Chinese (simplified), Hindi, Bengali and Urdu. Check the ones your text is written in, up to three at once.
Why are there mistakes in the text?
Blurry, small, tilted or shadowed text is hard to read, and the wrong language checked gives odd results. Take the photo straight on in good light, fill the frame with the text, and check the right language.
Does it keep tables and layout?
No. You get the words in reading order, line by line. Tables and columns become plain lines of text.
Page last reviewed 25 October 2026.