You have a receipt photo with a confirmation number on it, a screenshot of a recipe, or a scanned page where the words just will not highlight. The instinct is to retype it by hand. You do not have to. Every modern phone and computer can read the text inside a picture and hand it back to you as real, copyable text, usually in under a second and without sending the image anywhere. This is the overview guide for the whole topic. The deeper, device-specific walkthroughs are linked below as you need them.
How do you copy text from an image?
It takes one tap or one drag on the device you already have. Press and hold the text on an iPhone or iPad, tap Lens in Google Photos on Android, use the Snipping Tool’s text actions on Windows, or drag across the words in Preview on a Mac. A PDF that highlights needs none of this.
Why the text will not select in the first place
A normal document, like a web page or a Word file, stores text as actual characters, so your cursor can grab them. A photo or a scan stores text as pixels that happen to look like letters. There is nothing underneath for the cursor to select, which is why a scanned PDF looks perfectly readable yet refuses to highlight. The job, then, is to turn those pixels back into characters.
The technology that does this is optical character recognition, or OCR. It studies the shapes in an image, recognises them as letters and words, and rebuilds editable text. It used to be slow, clunky and inaccurate. Today it runs right on your device, fast and quietly, which is why the feature has shown up everywhere without much fanfare.
How do you copy text from an image on iPhone or iPad?
Apple calls its version Live Text, and it works on photos, screenshots and what you see through the camera. Open a picture in the Photos app, then press and hold on any text in it. After a moment the words become selectable, with the familiar grab handles. Drag to choose what you want, then tap Copy. You can also tap the small Live Text button (lines of text inside a frame) in the bottom corner to select everything at once.
It works live too. Point the Camera app at a sign, a label or a page, and when the Live Text button appears, tap it to capture the words without taking a photo at all. If you are mainly working from screen grabs, the focused walkthrough is how to extract text from a screenshot.
How do you get text out of an image on Android?
Android leans on Google Lens, which is built into Google Photos and the Google app, and on Circle to Search on newer phones. Open a picture in Google Photos and tap the Lens icon, or take a screenshot and tap the Lens or search option that appears. Lens scans the image, then lets you tap Select text, drag over the part you want, and choose Copy. On phones with Circle to Search, press and hold the home button or navigation bar, then draw around the text to pull it out.
The result lands on your clipboard like any other copy, ready to paste into a note, a message or an email. For the version aimed specifically at photos rather than documents, see how to copy text from a picture.
How do you extract text from an image on Windows?
Windows has two strong options. The built-in Snipping Tool can recognise text: take a snip, then look for the text actions button in the toolbar, which lets you copy all the recognised text or just the part you select. The other is PowerToys Text Extractor, a free Microsoft utility. Once installed, press its shortcut (by default Win+Shift+T), drag a box over any text on screen, and it goes straight to your clipboard. Text Extractor is the faster choice when you do this often, because it works over anything visible, including a video frame or a window that blocks selection.
For PDFs specifically
Most PDFs are not images at all, and you can select and copy from them like any document. The trouble starts with scanned or locked files. Those need OCR or a small workaround, which is its own topic worth doing properly. The full method, including the awkward password-protected and read-only cases, is in how to copy text from a PDF, with the trickier files covered in how to copy text from a scanned or locked PDF.
Can a Mac copy text from a picture?
macOS has Live Text too, and it behaves like the iPhone version. Open an image in Preview or Quick Look, then click and drag across the text as if it were a normal document. When the cursor turns into a text selector, you can highlight and press Cmd+C to copy. It also works on PDFs that are really scans, and on stills you pull from a video. No extra app, no upload, just select and copy.
When the text comes out wrong
OCR is excellent with clean, printed text and weaker with everything else. If the result is garbled, a few things usually help:
- Get more resolution. Recognition works far better on a large, sharp image than a tiny or blurry one. Zoom in before you screenshot, or take a closer photo, rather than cropping a tiny region afterwards.
- Straighten the shot. Text photographed at an angle or curved on a page throws the recognition off. Square it up and flatten the page where you can.
- Improve the contrast. Dark text on a light background reads best. Glare, shadows and busy backgrounds all cost accuracy.
- Proofread numbers and symbols. Letters tend to come out right, but a 0 can become an O, and a 1 an l. Always check codes, amounts and punctuation by eye before you trust them.
Handwriting is the hardest case. Neat printing has a fair chance, but cursive and messy notes are still hit and miss across every tool, so treat anything you get from handwriting as a draft to correct rather than a finished copy.
The one habit that makes this pay off
Pulling text out of an image is only half the value. The other half is being able to find it again. People screenshot things precisely because they matter later, the booking code, the address, the quote, and then the screenshot vanishes into a camera roll where nothing is searchable. The words are right there in the picture, but your device treats them as a flat image and forgets them.
That is the gap worth closing. If your tools read the text inside every image you save and keep it searchable, a screenshot stops being a dead end and becomes something you can actually look up. Copy it once, recognise it once, and the contents are yours to find whenever you need them, with no retyping and no scrolling back through the camera roll.
Sources
- Use Live Text to interact with content in a photo or video on iPhone, Apple Support
- Get info about your photos and surroundings with Google Lens, Google Photos Help
- Use Snipping Tool to capture screenshots, Microsoft Support
- Interact with text in a photo using Live Text in Preview on Mac, Apple Support