Taking a screenshot is a convenient way to record an important message and take notes while watching videos, commercials or even video calls. Want an easier way to capture text from your Mac’s screen so you don’t have to sit around with a pen and paper all the time? Fortunately, we found an app that allows this, and using it it’s easy to capture text from the Mac screen.
One of today’s challenges is to accurately copy the text on your Mac screen, which is paramount. No one wants to risk losing anything in translation, whether it’s promotion or Advertising. Of course, you can pull out your phone, open the Google Translate app, and then move around. What if it’s not as true as it seems? That’s why I recommend using TextSniper to capture all the important text shared during a Zoom meeting or any other online classroom lecture.
I’ve been using TextSniper for a month now and I’ve been really impressed with its speed and accuracy. Let’s start how to set it up and use it to capture any text from your Mac’s screen.
Lets start.
How to Capture Any Text from Mac Screen with TextSniper
Stage 1: Download and install TextSniper.
Step 2: After installing it, you need to let TextSniper take over your screen from System Preferences. Click the TextSniper icon in the menu bar and select Capture Text. This will bring up the option to ask you to allow access. Click Open System Preferences.
Stage 3: Once the System Preferences window opens, go to Security & Privacy > Privacy tab and then select Screen Recording from the left pane.
Step 4: Click Lock in the bottom left and enter the admin password. Then check the box in the right pane in front of TextSniper.
Step 5: Exit and Restart after confirming this action. TextSniper will restart and the icon will reappear in the menu bar.
Use TextSniper to Capture Text from Your Mac Screen
Let’s say you’re watching a video, commercial, or part of a virtual meeting.
Whenever you see any text on the screen that you need to write down later, you need to hit a screenshot shortcut. Here’s what you need to do.
Stage 1: Press the keyboard shortcut Shift+Cmd+2 on your Mac.
Step 2: Select the area where you want to capture the text. When you do this, TextSniper displays a thumbs up icon and the text – Copied to Clipboard.
Stage 3: Open any document or any application where you want to paste the selected text.
While TextSniper works perfectly for anything like PDF, Images, videos and online meetings. However, if your usage is limited to images and PDF files only, you can also try OwlOCR. A worthy alternative to TextSniper.
How to Capture Any Text from PDF, Image or Screen Text Using OwlOCR From Your Mac
While TextSniper is a great option for multi-purpose use, OwlOCR works great for images with text, text on the screen, and Optical Character Recognition functionality for PDFs that don’t let you copy text easily. Here’s how to get started.
Stage 1: Download the OwlOCR app from the Mac App Store.
Step 2: Start the OwlOCR app and press the button for language correction.
Stage 3: Drag and drop the PDF or image file that should be read by OwlOCR.
Step 4: Click the OCR Page button and let the app do its magic.
After that the app will scan all the text in the image and display it in the window pane next to the image.
If you have a PDF of several pages, you can hit the OCR All button and it will extract and paste them into the side window. This convenience puts you at ease when you need to extract text from a long PDF document.
If you want to get extra text from multiple PDFs and take a few screenshots together, you may want to consider purchasing the Pro version which will cost you $13.99.
Be smart
It shouldn’t be difficult to get text from images, PDFs or videos after using these two apps. Selecting text from a fast-paced video or movie can be a little tricky, but you can always pause the video to take a screenshot. The only limitation you can find is that both apps are limited to English language only.
Both apps have helped me a lot in taking notes from videos that are part of my online courses. I use both as alternatives and I am still satisfied.
Next: Want to take a screenshot of the full page on your Mac? Click on the next link to check out four great tools for capturing scrolling screenshots.
