OCR APp on the Mac?

By Maldalain, 3 October, 2024

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hi all
I am looking for an OCR mac app. I have Envision but since it is a Rosetta thing it does not work well. A free app would be great.
Thanks

Options

Comments

By mr grieves on Friday, October 4, 2024 - 07:01

If you use VoiceOver, there is some OCR built in. You turn it on in VO Utility (VO+F8) then VoiceOver Recognition, then Image Descriptions. If I then navigate my VO cursor to an image I press VO+Shift+L and it will give a short description which includes the text. I can then use VO+Shift+C to copy last phrase to clipboard.

I use Smultron as a text editor (it wasn't free but it was about £6 or something). It has a text scanner in it that will OCR some text. I use that as a text editor anyway so find it helpful.

Neither are all that sophisticated so there are maybe better options.

As already mentioned, it's probably worth looking at VOCR as it's free and open source. I'm not quite sure what all the different options mean but I've not really put any time into figuring it out myself. I presume you need to be using VoiceOver for it to be useful.

By Maldalain on Friday, October 4, 2024 - 07:01

What I am looking for is ENvision equivalent on the mac. ANy idea where I can find something like this?

By mr grieves on Friday, October 4, 2024 - 07:01

When you say you want it to work like the Envision app, do you mean you want to take a photo with the Mac's camera and then OCR that? Or are there some other functions you need?

Regarding Smultron, the way I use it is to copy/paste images into the text scanner. However I just had a look and it does have options to take a photo using either your Mac's camera or the iPhone. I've not tried it but can give it a go if it is what you are wanting.

One other option that's probably not what you want, but with universal copy and paste, you can fairly easily do things on an iPhone and then just copy the text onto your Mac directly using copy and paste. Just mentioning it in case it is an option.