Text Snatch

Copy text from anything on your screen.

Press ⇧⌘2, drag over any text — in a photo, a video, a PDF, or an app that won't let you select — and it's on your clipboard. Everything happens on your Mac.

Getting started

• Text Snatch lives in the menu bar and has no Dock icon. Look for the blue icon at the top right.
• Press ⇧⌘2, or click the icon and choose Grab Text.
• Drag a rectangle around the text, or click a window to take all of its text. esc cancels.
• A small note shows what was copied. Paste it anywhere.

What it does

Everything below is in version 1.0. The settings live in the menu bar dropdown.

• Grab Text — drag a rectangle over anything on screen, or click a window to take all of its text. Works on photos, video frames, PDFs and apps that won't let you select.
• Grab Shortcut — ⌘2, ⇧⌘2 (the default), ⌃⌘2 or None, or record your own. Any combination using ⌘ or ⌃ works, and function keys work on their own.
• Keep Line Breaks — on, one line per line on screen. Off, wrapped lines become paragraphs and words hyphenated across a break are rejoined.
• Launch at Login — starts Text Snatch when you log in. Install it in Applications first.
• Menu Bar Icon — colour, or monochrome that follows the menu bar's light or dark tint.
• Languages — text is recognized in the languages your Mac is set up for, so accented and French text comes back intact rather than as stray characters.

Questions

Nothing happens when I press the shortcut

Another app is probably using the same keys — macOS doesn't warn about that. Click the menu bar icon and pick a different combination under Grab Shortcut: ⌘2, ⇧⌘2, ⌃⌘2, or record your own. If the menu shows Allow Screen Access…, the permission is still missing.

macOS keeps asking for Screen Recording

After you allow it, the app has to restart. Choose Quit & Reopen in the macOS prompt, or quit Text Snatch from its menu and open it again.

Some of the text came out wrong

Recognition follows what's on screen: small, blurry or very stylised text is harder to read. Zoom in first, or select a tighter area around the text you want. Handwriting isn't supported.

Which languages can it read?

The languages your Mac is set to use, plus English — and French as well on Canadian systems. That covers English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Ukrainian, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Turkish and more. Change the order of languages in System Settings → General → Language & Region.

Can I keep the line breaks?

Yes — Keep Line Breaks in the menu is on by default. Turn it off and wrapped lines are joined back into paragraphs, with words split across lines put back together.

Can I start it automatically?

Turn on Launch at Login in the menu.

Does anything leave my Mac?

No. Text is recognized on your Mac, nothing is uploaded, and no data is collected. See the privacy policy.

How do I quit it?

Click the menu bar icon and choose Quit Text Snatch.

Version history

1.0 (build 4)

First release. Grab text by dragging or by clicking a window, a shortcut you can change, optional line-break handling, launch at login, and a colour or monochrome menu bar icon.

Runs on macOS 11 Big Sur and later, as a universal app for both Apple silicon and Intel. Recognition happens on your Mac using Apple's built-in text recognition — nothing is uploaded, and the app makes no network connections at all.

To check which build you have, click the menu bar icon and choose About Text Snatch — it shows the version and the build in brackets, like 1.0 (4). If the app won't open at all, Finder won't tell you either; in Terminal, defaults read /Applications/Text\ Snatch.app/Contents/Info CFBundleVersion prints it without launching anything. Builds handed out before this one all reported build 1, so if yours says 1 it is superseded and worth replacing.

Contact

Questions, problems or suggestions: support@spssolutions.ca. Telling me your macOS version and what you were grabbing helps.