Online Tool Store
Image OCR
Pull printed text out of photos, screenshots, and scanned documents with an in-browser OCR engine — nothing is uploaded to a server.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.
Recognizes printed English text. Nothing is uploaded — the image and the OCR engine both run on your device.
Extracted text
How the image OCR tool works
- Choose an image containing printed text — a photo, screenshot, or scanned document.
- Click Extract text. The first time, your browser downloads a small OCR engine and English language model.
- Tesseract’s WebAssembly engine analyzes the image locally and returns the recognized text, plus an average confidence score.
- Copy the text or download it as a .txt file — nothing is stored or sent anywhere.
How OCR recognition works
Optical Character Recognition finds regions of an image that look like text, segments them into lines and individual characters, then matches each shape against patterns the engine was trained on. This tool uses Tesseract OCR’s LSTM (long short-term memory) recognition model, which reads whole lines of text at once rather than character by character, which is generally more accurate on real-world photos and screenshots than older per-character engines.
Accuracy depends heavily on image quality: sharp focus, good contrast between text and background, and text that isn’t rotated or heavily stylized all recognize noticeably better than blurry or low-contrast photos.
FAQ
What image formats does the OCR tool accept?
PNG, JPG/JPEG, WebP, and BMP. For the best results, use a clear, well-lit photo or a screenshot where the text isn’t skewed or blurry.
Which languages can it read?
This release recognizes printed English text. The recognition engine (Tesseract) supports many other languages, so more language packs may be added later.
Does it work on handwriting?
It’s built and tuned for printed text — receipts, signs, screenshots, scanned documents. Handwriting recognition is far less reliable and results will vary a lot.
Is my image uploaded anywhere?
No. The OCR engine runs entirely in your browser using WebAssembly. Your image is never sent to Online Tool Store or any other server — only a one-time, one-off download of the English language model happens on first use, cached locally by your browser for next time.
Why does the first extraction take longer than the next one?
The first run downloads and initializes the OCR engine and language model (a few megabytes). Your browser caches them, so later extractions on this device start almost instantly.
How we compare
| Feature | Online Tool Store | OnlineOCR.net | Google Keep (mobile) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Image processed on your device, never uploaded | ✓ | Uploads to server | Requires the app |
| No sign-up or account | ✓ | ✓ | Requires a Google account |
| Free with no daily limit | ✓ | Daily page limit | ✓ |
If you need a quick, private way to pull text out of a photo or screenshot without installing an app or creating an account, the Online Tool Store Image OCR tool keeps the whole process on your own device.