How to Extract Text from an Image

You can turn any clear photo, scan, or screenshot into copyable text in under a minute. This guide walks you through the fastest workflow with ScanText — no account and no desktop software required.

Start with a sharp image: good lighting, minimal blur, and straight alignment. For screenshots, paste directly with Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on Mac) instead of saving a file first — this is the fastest path for error messages, chat snippets, and slides.

Open ScanText at scantext.net, upload or paste your image, and wait a few seconds. By default OCR runs in your browser when possible, so your file often never leaves your device. For difficult scans, crop, rotate, or boost contrast before scanning — processing stays in your browser.

Review the extracted text in the preview panel, then copy to clipboard or download TXT/DOCX. For Arabic, Hindi, or mixed-language documents, pick the matching language in the tool before running OCR to improve RTL and script accuracy.