Here Is A Great App To Copy Text from the Uncopyable (PDFs, Images, Videos, Presentations, Screenshots...)

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TextSniper is an excellent app that I discovered in Apple's Copy the Uncopyable. TextSniper, as its name insinuates, allows you to copy text anywhere it is found: in photos, PDFs, screenshots, websites, videos, online presentations, scanned paper documents, or apps. In fact, the app developer created TextSniper out of frustration for not being able to copy a URL displayed in a YouTube video. The app is simple and easy to use. No special skills are required.

Textsniper

With its OCR capabilities, you can easily 'extract and recognize any non-searchable and non-editable text' on your device. The OCR engine does not even require Internet connection to process documentThe way it works is east. Once the app is installed, use your mouse to select the area where text appears whether it is on an image  or your screen, and TextSniper automatically recognizes it and saves it to your clipboard. From there you can can paste it in your document or anywhere you want. This is definitely a great way to digitise text that is otherwise non-digitisable. 

There are many ways to use TextSniper. These include: convert various image formats (e.g., JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP..) to text; copy text even when it is uncopyable like in ebooks or web articles; grab text or turn it into speech in video games, read QR or barcodes. generate alt text from the screenshot for tweets, and many more.

As for the features it offers. These include: 
  • "On-device OCR technology. No internet connection is needed.
  • Instant text recognition. No need to upload files into the application. OCR document or file on the fly.
  • High accuracy and performance processing any documents.
  • Recognizes even tiny text on images with low quality or dense background.
  • Customizable. Custom keyboard shortcuts to extract text with various options.
  • You can have TextSniper speak the recognized text whenever you need it.
  • Supports optical character recognition in multiple languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Traditional and Simplified Chinese.
  • Running macOS Catalina: English language only supported.
  • Use your iPad or iPhone device camera to quickly capture text from a photo or scanned document.
  • Fully compatible with macOS Big Sur and optimised for Apple's M1 chips."