How to copy text from an image on any device

Your phone or computer can probably copy text from an image already. Use Live Text on an iPhone, iPad or Mac, Google Lens on Android (or the yellow T button in Gallery on a Samsung Galaxy), and Text actions in the Snipping Tool on Windows 11: select the words in the picture, copy them, and paste them anywhere. For a whole page, a table, messy handwriting or a device without these tools, open the image with Google Docs, or use our free image to text tool in any browser.

Copy text from an image: quick answer by device

Device and app	Where to find it	Notes
iPhone and iPad, Photos	Touch and hold a word > Copy, or Live Text button > Select All	iPhone XS, XR or later with iOS 15 or later
iPhone, Camera	Point at the text > Detect Text button > Copy	Works before you take the photo
Mac, Preview	Drag across the text > Control-click > Copy Text	Tools > Text Selection if it will not select
Mac, Photos	Control-click the text > Copy Text	Or press Command-C
Android, Google Photos	More > Google Lens > tap and select the words	Also in the Google app and Chrome
Android, Google app	Google Lens > tap the text > Select text > Copy	Photos, screenshots or the camera
Samsung Galaxy, Gallery	Yellow T icon, bottom right	Galaxy S24 to S26, Z Fold, Z Flip, A series
Windows 11, Snipping Tool	Windows logo key + Shift + S > Text actions	Runs on your PC
Windows, PowerToys	Windows logo key + Shift + T, then drag	Copies straight to the clipboard
Google Drive on a computer	Right-click > Open with > Google Docs	JPEG, PNG or GIF up to 2 MB
OneNote for Windows	Right-click the picture > Copy Text from Picture	The command can take a while to appear
Any browser	Our image to text tool	Whole pages, handwriting, 10 free reads a day

For a line or two of text, the built-in tools are the quickest. For a full page you want as one block of text, a Word file or a spreadsheet, the browser tools further down save retyping.

How to copy text from a photo on iPhone and iPad

Apple calls this Live Text. It works in Photos, Camera, Safari, Quick Look and other apps (Apple).

1. Open the Photos app and select a photo or video, or go to an image online.
2. Touch and hold a word, then move the grab points to cover the text you want. In a video, pause it first.
3. Tap Copy. To take all the text in the photo, tap Select All (Apple).
4. Paste the text into Notes, Messages, a document or any other app.

To highlight every word at once, tap the Live Text button in the lower-right corner of the photo (Apple). Apple’s iOS 27 guide calls it the Detect Text button, and once the text is selected it also offers Look Up, Translate, Search the web and Share (Apple). Tap the button again to go back to the photo.

What you need: an iPhone XS, iPhone XR or later with iOS 15 or later, or iPadOS 15.1 or later on an iPad (8th generation) or later, iPad mini (5th generation) or later, iPad Air (3rd generation) or later, any iPad Pro 11-inch, or iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation) or later. Copying text from a paused video needs iOS 16 or iPadOS 16 (Apple). If nothing happens, go to Settings > General > Language & Region and turn on Live Text (Apple).

Languages: Live Text reads Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese, plus Cantonese (Apple). Hindi and the other Indian languages, Arabic and Hebrew are not on Apple’s list. For those, use another tool, such as our image to text tool, which reads Hindi and many other scripts.

Copy text with the iPhone camera

You do not have to take the picture first:

1. Open Camera and hold the iPhone so the text is in the frame.
2. When a yellow frame appears around the text, tap the Detect Text button.
3. Touch and hold the text, use the grab points, then tap Copy or Select All.
4. Tap the button again to go back to the camera (Apple).

Depending on the text, quick actions also appear at the bottom of the screen to call a number, open a website or convert a currency. To stop the camera from detecting text, go to Settings > Camera and turn off Show Detected Text (Apple).

How to copy text from an image on a Mac

Live Text works on the Mac too, in Preview, Photos and Safari.

In Preview:

1. Open the image in Preview.
2. Drag across the text you want.
3. Control-click the selection and choose Copy Text.

If the text will not select, choose Tools > Text Selection to turn on the Text Selection tool (Apple).

In Photos: open the photo, hold the pointer over the text, Control-click and choose Copy Text, or press Command-C (Apple).

In Safari: drag across the text in a picture on a web page, Control-click the selection and choose Copy (Apple).

Apple notes that Live Text on the Mac is not available in all regions or languages (Apple). The steps above are from Apple’s current guides for macOS 27, and Apple keeps the same pages for every version back to macOS Monterey 12.

How to copy text from a picture on Android

Google Lens in Google Photos

1. Open the Google Photos app and select the photo.
2. At the top, tap More, then Google Lens.
3. Tap and select the words you want to copy (Google).

Google Lens in the Google app

The Google app gives you a Select text button with a menu around the text:

1. Open the Google app and tap Google Lens in the search bar.
2. Under Search with your camera, tap Search. Point the camera at the text and tap the shutter, or choose a photo under Screenshots.
3. Tap the text, or drag the corners of the box over it.
4. Tap Select text, then Copy. The same menu offers Listen, Translate and Search (Google).

For a picture on a web page, touch and hold it in Chrome and tap Search image with Google Lens (Google).

Circle to Search

On select Android phones, including Pixel 6 and later, touch and hold the Home button or navigation handle, then circle, highlight or tap the text you want (Google). Google’s help page describes searching and translating what you select, not a copy step, so for copying use Lens as above. Google adds that it may not work in banking, medical and other confidential apps.

Samsung Galaxy: the T button in Gallery

1. Open the Gallery app and select the photo.
2. Tap the yellow T icon in the bottom right corner of the screen.
3. The text is highlighted. Copy all or part of it and paste it into another app (Samsung).

Samsung says this works on most recent Galaxy phones, including the Galaxy S24, S25 and S26, Z Fold, Z Flip and A series, on the latest software. For a complex layout, select one block of text at a time (Samsung).

How to copy text from an image on Windows 11

Snipping Tool: Text actions

The Snipping Tool reads text in any snip, so it works on a photo, a scan or a screenshot.

1. Open the image on screen, in Photos, a browser or any other app.
2. Press the Windows logo key + Shift + S and drag across the part with the text.
3. Open the snip in Snipping Tool and select Text actions.
4. Select the words you want and copy them, or choose Copy all text. Quick redact hides email addresses and phone numbers in the snip (Microsoft).

Microsoft says all text recognition in Snipping Tool runs locally on your device, so nothing is uploaded (Microsoft).

Photos app: Scan Text

Microsoft’s Windows Insider blog describes a Scan Text button in the Photos viewer that highlights the text so you can select and copy it, with support for more than 160 languages (Microsoft). That post, from March 2025, was written for Windows Insiders, and Microsoft’s Photos help page does not cover the button yet. If you do not see it in Photos, use the Snipping Tool.

PowerToys Text Extractor

If you use Microsoft PowerToys, press Windows logo key + Shift + T, then drag across any text on screen. The text goes straight to your clipboard. It reads only the languages whose Windows OCR language pack is installed, and Microsoft advises a quick proofread because the result may not be perfect (Microsoft).

Copy text from an image with Google Docs or OneNote

Google Docs (through Google Drive) turns a whole image into an editable document on a computer:

1. Upload the image to Google Drive.
2. Right-click the file.
3. Click Open with > Google Docs (Google).

Google lists the conditions for a good result. The file should be a JPEG, PNG, GIF or PDF of 2 MB or smaller, the text at least 10 pixels high and the page the right way up, in a common font such as Arial or Times New Roman. Bold, italics, font size and line breaks are likely to be kept, but lists, tables, columns, footnotes and endnotes are not likely to be detected (Google).

OneNote for Microsoft 365, OneNote 2024, 2021 and 2016 can copy text out of a picture you have pasted into a note:

1. Right-click the picture and click Copy Text from Picture.
2. Click where you want the text and press Ctrl+V (Microsoft).

If the command is missing, OneNote may still be reading the image. Microsoft says to wait and try again, and that some results can take 24 to 48 hours. For a multi-page printout, right-click any page image and choose Copy Text from this Page of the Printout or Copy Text from All the Pages of the Printout.

Image to text online: free tools that work in any browser

Our image to text tool reads a whole photo, scan or screenshot at once and works on a phone or a computer, with nothing to install:

1. Drop the image on the page, choose it, or paste it with Ctrl + V (Cmd + V on a Mac). JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF and BMP work, plus HEIC and AVIF where your browser can open them.
2. Keep Text selected under Get it as, and Printed under The text is. Choose Handwriting or Screenshot there if that fits the picture better.
3. Press Read the text. The words usually come back in a few seconds.
4. Fix anything in the text box, then press Copy text or Download as text for a .txt file.

The result is plain text in reading order, with the picture’s line breaks. Words the AI cannot make out are marked [unclear] instead of being guessed, so you know where to look. You get 10 free reads a day without signing up, or 30 a day with a free Google sign-in, and the count resets at midnight UTC. The free reads take one image at a time, and the tool does not open PDF files, so take a screenshot of each PDF page first.

What is sent: nothing until you press the button. Then your browser makes a smaller copy of the image, at most 1,600 pixels on its longest side and without its location or camera details, and sends it to our AI, which sends the text back. We keep neither the image nor the text. For ID cards, passports or bank documents, crop the image to the part you need first.

Three related pages start with the right settings for a particular job:

• Screenshot to text: paste a screenshot of a chat, app, web page or error message. Each message and label comes back on its own line, in reading order, and icons are skipped. For a very tall scrolling screenshot, cut it into parts with the crop tool first, because the shrunken copy makes small text harder to read.
• Handwriting to text: for notes, letters, diaries and forms (more on this below).
• Image to Word: gives you an editable .docx file instead of plain text. Headings stay on their own lines, lines the photo broke in the middle of a paragraph are joined back up, and list items stay apart. Fonts, colors and pictures are not copied.

For a table you want in rows and columns, image to Excel builds a spreadsheet, and our guide to turning a photo of a table into Excel walks through it.

How to convert handwriting to text

Handwriting is harder to read than print for every tool, and the help pages say little about it. Apple’s and Samsung’s pages do not mention handwriting, and Google Drive’s tips ask for common fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman (Google). Google Translate does say its camera can translate handwritten notes (Google), which helps when the note is in another language.

Our handwriting to text page is set up for it:

• It types out each line as written, keeps the writer’s line breaks and does not correct spelling, so you see exactly what was on the page.
• Neat print and cursive usually come out well. Very messy writing, faint pencil and crossed-out words may leave a few words marked [unclear] for you to fill in.
• Sketches, arrows and highlighting do not come across, and notes in two columns or up the margin are not rebuilt. Crop each block into its own image and read it separately, so the parts come back in the order you mean.
• Choose Word under Get it as for a .docx file, or Excel for a handwritten table such as a score sheet or timesheet.

For a bound notebook, press the page flat or hold it at the edges and shoot from straight above, because words in the curve near the spine come out squashed and shadowed. On glossy paper, turn the flash off and use window light instead.

Tips for getting accurate text from a photo

Most mistakes start with the picture, not the tool. These tips come from Google’s, Samsung’s and our own advice:

• Light: use even daylight or bright room light, with no shadow from your hand or phone. Shadows and glare get in the way of text recognition (Samsung).
• Angle: shoot the page flat and straight on, one page per photo. A steep angle squeezes the letters at the far edge.
• Orientation: turn a sideways scan upright before you read it. Google Drive needs documents the right way up (Google), and you can rotate an image in your browser.
• Resolution: small text needs to be bigger in the picture. Google asks for text at least 10 pixels high, and Samsung warns that low-resolution photos give incomplete or inaccurate results. Move closer, or crop away the desk and margins so the text fills the frame.
• Columns: most tools read straight across, which mixes two columns together. Crop each column into its own image, or select one block at a time.
• Tables: Google Docs is not likely to keep a table, and plain text loses the grid. Use image to Excel, and see photo of a table to Excel for other ways.
• Contrast: dark ink on light paper reads best. For faint pencil or yellowed paper, raise the contrast with the contrast tool and read the saved copy.
• Check the details: every tool can misread a smudged digit or an unusual name, and a misread word looks as tidy as a correct one. Compare names, amounts, dates and ID numbers with the picture.

Screenshots are the easiest images of all, because the text is sharp and straight. If you crop a screenshot before you share or read it, our guide on whether you can uncrop a screenshot explains when the cut-off part can come back.

Troubleshooting: when the text will not copy

• No Live Text button on iPhone: turn on Live Text in Settings > General > Language & Region, and check that your model and language are supported.
• Preview will not select the text: choose Tools > Text Selection.
• No T icon on a Samsung Galaxy: update the phone’s software. Samsung lists recent Galaxy models, so older or cheaper models may not have it.
• Circle to Search says “Screen search isn’t available”: set Google as the default digital assistant app, turn on Use screen and app data, and update the Google app (Google).
• OneNote does not offer Copy Text from Picture: wait a few moments while OneNote reads the image, then right-click again.
• PowerToys says “No OCR languages are installed”: install a Windows OCR language pack for your language, as Microsoft’s Text Extractor page shows.
• Our tool says No text found: it copies words rather than describing pictures, so a photo with no readable writing comes back empty. Retake it closer, sharper and straight on.