How to Copy Text From a Screenshot
Screenshots are the easiest way to grab something on screen, and the most frustrating when you actually want the words. You cannot select text inside an image. OCR fixes that, turning the picture back into copyable text in a few seconds.
Why you can't just select it
A screenshot is an image, a grid of pixels. Even though it shows text, your computer sees only colors, not characters. There is nothing to highlight. To get the words back, you need OCR to read the image and reconstruct the text, exactly what an image to text tool does.
The good news: screenshots are often ideal OCR input. They are sharp, high-contrast, and perfectly straight, with crisp on-screen fonts. That makes them some of the most reliable images you can run.
Step by step
1. Take or locate the screenshot
Capture the screen area you need. Most systems use a built-in shortcut and save a PNG, which is a clean, lossless format that OCR handles beautifully.
2. Upload it
Open the screenshot to text tool, which is tuned for this exact job, and drop your image in. You can also use the general image to text converter or PNG to text if your file is a PNG. No account, and the file is deleted after processing.
3. Copy the result
The recognized text appears in seconds. Because screenshots are so clean, accuracy is usually excellent. Copy it to your clipboard or download it as a file.
4. Glance over it
Even with great input, OCR is not flawless. Give numbers, code, and unusual symbols a quick check before you rely on the text.
Tips for the cleanest result
- Crop to just the text you need before uploading; trimming menus, toolbars, and chrome reduces clutter.
- Zoom in before capturing if the on-screen text is tiny, so each character has more pixels.
- Avoid screenshots of screenshots, which compound compression and blur.
For more, our guide on how to improve OCR accuracy applies to screenshots too, though you will need it less often here than with photos.
Common questions
Can I pull text out of a video frame?
Yes, if you screenshot the frame first. Pause the video, capture the frame, and run that image through the tool like any other screenshot. Sharper frames read better than motion-blurred ones.
Does it work for code or error messages?
It does, and screenshots of code or errors are common use cases. Watch the punctuation and symbols closely, since characters like l, 1, I, O, and 0 can be confused, and that matters more in code than in prose.
What about non-English screenshots?
Supported. Choose the matching language for the best result, and see multilingual OCR if your screenshot uses a non-Latin script.
Grab your text
Have a screenshot with text you need? Drop it into the free screenshot to text converter and copy the words in seconds. For other images, our step-by-step guide to extract text from an image covers the whole process.