About this tool
Turn a picture of text into text you can copy, search, and edit: screenshots of error messages, photographed pages, scanned letters, whiteboards, receipts, memes. The recognition runs on your device using the Tesseract OCR engine compiled to WebAssembly, so the image never leaves your computer, which matters for documents and IDs.
The first run downloads the engine and the language pack for the language you choose (about 10 MB); after that it is cached and works offline. Small screenshots are automatically enlarged before recognition, since OCR likes text about 30 pixels tall. Clear, straight, high-contrast text gives the best results.
Everything happens inside your browser. Your file is never uploaded to a server: the conversion runs on your own device using WebAssembly, and the result is downloaded straight from memory. Close the tab and nothing is left behind.
How to use it
- Drop your PNG files into the box above, or click to browse. Nothing is uploaded.
- Adjust the options if you want; the defaults suit most files.
- Click the button and wait a moment.
- Download the results individually or all at once as a ZIP.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is it?
On clean printed text and screenshots, very. Handwriting, decorative fonts, low-resolution photos, and skewed pages reduce accuracy; crop and straighten the image first for better results.
Can it read PDFs?
Use PDF to Text for PDFs with real text. For scanned PDFs, convert the pages to images with PDF to PNG and run them through this tool.
Why is the first run slow?
The OCR engine and language data are downloaded once and cached. Recognition itself takes a few seconds per image.
Is this really free?
Yes. The site is supported by ads, and there are no limits on how many files you convert.
Are my files uploaded anywhere?
No. The converter runs entirely in your browser. Files stay on your device, which also makes it faster than upload-based converters for anything larger than a few megabytes.
Is there a file size limit?
The only limit is your device's memory. Images and audio of any normal size are fine; for video, files under about 500 MB work well on most laptops and phones.
Which browsers are supported?
Current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari on desktop and mobile. Very old browsers without WebAssembly support will not work.