Offline OCR: Image to Text, No Upload
Extract text from screenshots and photos with an OCR engine that runs in your browser. The image never leaves your device; after the first load, recognition even works offline.
1. Image
2. Extracted text (editable)
Tip: keep "Chinese" selected for mostly-Chinese images — mixed-language OCR can misread CJK characters near symbols. Clearer, higher-resolution images give better results.
How to convert an image to text
- Add your image — paste a screenshot with Ctrl/⌘V, drop a file onto the box, or click to browse.
- Pick the OCR language — "Chinese" for mostly-Chinese images, "Chinese + English" for mixed text, "English only" for pure English.
- Click "Extract text" — the first run downloads the OCR engine (a few MB), later runs start instantly.
- Edit and export — fix any mistakes right in the result box, then copy the text or download it as a .txt file.
When this comes in handy
Copying text out of a screenshot. Error dialogs, slide decks, tweets, chat messages — anything you can see but can't select. Paste the screenshot and get editable text in seconds, without retyping.
Digitizing paper documents privately. Contracts, receipts, medical records: photos of sensitive pages shouldn't go to a random server. Here the OCR runs entirely on your device — you can even disconnect from the internet after the page loads.
Working on a locked-down machine. No install, no account, no sign-up — useful on office or school computers where you can't install OCR software.
Notes and limits
- Works with common image formats (PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP) including clipboard screenshots.
- Best results come from sharp, horizontal, printed text. Handwriting, stylized fonts, skewed photos and very low resolution reduce accuracy.
- The OCR engine (Tesseract.js) and language packs are downloaded once and cached by your browser; after that, everything runs locally.
What you can do next
How it works
- Open the page once while online so the OCR engine can be fetched and cached.
- Drop in a screenshot or photo, or paste one straight from the clipboard.
- Pick the text language and run recognition — processing happens on your device.
- Copy or download the extracted text; the image is never uploaded.
When this helps
- Lifting text from confidential documents, contracts or medical reports.
- Copying error messages or code out of screenshots while debugging.
- Extracting quotes from scanned pages on a plane or anywhere offline.
- Grabbing text from images that workplace policy forbids uploading.
Limits and notes
- The first recognition needs a network connection to download the OCR engine; later runs are fully local.
- Handwriting and low-resolution photos reduce accuracy, as with any OCR.
- Recognition runs page by page in your browser, so very large images take longer.
Private by design
OCR usually means sending your image to a cloud API. Here the recognition engine (Tesseract compiled to WebAssembly) runs inside your browser tab. The only network traffic is the one-time engine download; your images are read from disk into memory and never transmitted.
FAQ
How do I convert an image to text online without uploading it?
Use a tool whose OCR runs in the browser — like this one. Paste or drop your image, click "Extract text", and the recognition happens on your own device. You can verify it: load the page, go offline, and it still works.
Which languages can it recognize?
Chinese (simplified) and English, separately or mixed. For mostly-Chinese images, keep "Chinese" selected — mixed-language mode can misread CJK characters that sit next to symbols like dashes or arrows.
Is my image uploaded to a server?
No. OCR runs via WebAssembly entirely in your browser (Tesseract.js). Your image never leaves your device — you can even go offline after the page loads.
Why does the first run take longer?
The OCR engine and language packs (a few MB) are served from Pocketful and cached by your browser after the first load.
What images work best?
Screenshots with sharp, horizontal text at reasonable size. Handwriting, heavily stylized fonts, skewed photos and very low resolution will reduce accuracy.
Need a table turned into Markdown instead?
Use our Table Screenshot → Markdown tool — it detects rows and columns and outputs a ready-to-paste Markdown table.