How OCR Text Extractor works

Step 1: Upload an image

Drag and drop an image onto the upload area, or click to choose a file from your device. Supported formats include PNG, JPG, WEBP, and GIF. The preview shows exactly what will be processed.

Step 2: Configure options

Choose the language of the text in your image so AI OCR and the browser fallback can target the right script. Enable Clean Mode when working with app screenshots, web pages, or documents where layout matters — it helps reconstruct reading order and focus on dialog boxes in the browser fallback. Enable Local OCR only when you want to skip cloud AI and keep recognition in this browser tab (Tesseract.js).

Step 3: OCR recognition (AI first)

By default, the tool sends your image through our server to Google Gemini for extraction. That path does not apply the browser preprocessing pipeline first—the image is recognized as uploaded. Details are in the Privacy Policy.

Step 4: Browser fallback & preprocessing

If AI OCR fails, returns no text, or you have reached the daily AI allowance, the tool falls back to Tesseract.js in a WebAssembly worker. On that fallback path only, the image runs through a preprocessing pipeline designed for real-world photos and screenshots:

• Smart upscaling — small images are enlarged so characters are easier to read
• Enhanced pass — grayscale, contrast stretch, and sharpening for clean screenshots
• Binary pass — adaptive thresholding for uneven lighting or faint text
• Modal detection — auto-crops centered dialogs in UI screenshots

Step 5: Copy or download

Review the extracted text in the output panel. Use the copy button to paste into Word, Google Docs, email, or code editors. Download as a plain .txt file for archiving or further editing.