Guide
How to Copy Text From a Screenshot on Mac (4 Ways)
You screenshotted an error message, an address, a license key. Now you need the text — not the picture. Retyping it is the wrong answer. Your Mac can read the image for you, on-device, in about a second.
Written by the Pastery team.
Your Mac can already read images
Most people screenshot a chunk of text and then retype it. They don't need to. Since macOS Monterey, every Mac with Apple Silicon ships with Live Text — Apple's on-device optical character recognition (OCR). It reads the words inside an image and lets you select and copy them like normal text. No app to install, no website to upload to, nothing leaves your Mac.
The catch is that it's quiet. There's no big "Extract Text" button anywhere obvious, so most people never discover it. Below are the four places it lives, fastest first.
Method 1 — Quick Look (the fastest)
This is the one to remember. It works on any image file without opening an app.
- Select the screenshot file in Finder (or on your Desktop).
- Press Space to open Quick Look.
- Move the pointer over the text — it turns into a text cursor.
- Drag to select the words you want, then press ⌘ C.
If selection doesn't trigger, click the Live Text button in the bottom-right corner of the Quick Look window first, then select. That's the whole flow — under two seconds once it's muscle memory.
Method 2 — Preview (when you also want the image)
If you're already going to open the screenshot to crop or mark it up, do the text grab there too. Open the image in Preview, hover over the text until you get a text cursor, drag to highlight, and press ⌘ C. The selected words land on your clipboard as editable text while the image stays untouched.
Method 3 — Straight from the screenshot preview
You don't even have to save the file first. After you capture with ⌘ ⇧ 4 or ⌘ ⇧ 5, a thumbnail floats in the bottom-right of the screen for a few seconds. Click it before it disappears to open the markup preview, then select the text with Live Text and copy it. Useful when you only ever wanted the words, not the picture.
Method 4 — Photos (for screenshots already in your library)
Screenshots that live in your Photos library work the same way. Open the screenshot in Photos, select the text, and copy it. Photos also lets you search your library for words it found inside images, which is handy when you can't remember which screenshot the text was in.
| Method | Use when | Apple Silicon required |
|---|---|---|
| Quick Look | The screenshot is a file in Finder | Yes |
| Preview | You also want to crop, edit, or save it | Yes |
| Screenshot preview | You just captured it and only want the text | Yes |
| Photos | It's already in your photo library | Yes |
When Live Text won't help
Live Text is excellent, but it has hard edges worth knowing:
- Apple Silicon only. On Mac, Live Text needs an M1 or later. Intel Macs don't get it at all.
- Small or blurry text loses accuracy. Tiny console output or compressed images can come back with the wrong characters. Zoom in before selecting and it usually recovers.
- The image has to exist somewhere. Live Text reads a file, a Photos entry, or a live preview. If you copied a screenshot to your clipboard and never saved it, there's nothing for Live Text to open — and macOS only keeps the single most recent clipboard item, so it may already be gone.
The real problem isn't copying — it's finding it again
Pulling text out of a screenshot you're looking at is solved. The frustrating part comes later: you remember screenshotting an error, a config snippet, a confirmation number — but you have no idea where that image went or when you copied it. Live Text can't help you there, because it only works once you've already found the image.
This is the gap Pastery fills. It records every screenshot you copy and, in the background, runs the same Apple Vision OCR engine over each one to index the text inside it. You don't tag anything or save anything by hand — you just copy normally. Later, you type a word you remember seeing — "TypeError", an order number, a function name — and the screenshot that contained it surfaces instantly, even if you copied it weeks ago.
border-radius surfaces a CSS screenshot copied days earlier — Pastery indexes the text inside every image you copy.So the two tools sit side by side: Live Text gets the words out of a screenshot you have open right now; Pastery makes sure you can always find the screenshot again by what it says. For the full picture on that side of things, see how to search inside screenshots on Mac, or read more on accessing clipboard history on Mac.
Frequently asked questions
How do I copy text from a screenshot on Mac?
Open the screenshot — select it in Finder and press Space for Quick Look, or open it in Preview. Hover over the text until the pointer becomes a text cursor, drag to select, and press ⌘C. This uses Live Text, the on-device OCR built into macOS on Apple Silicon Macs.
Does Mac have built-in OCR?
Yes — it's called Live Text, introduced in macOS Monterey. It runs entirely on-device with no internet connection and works in Quick Look, Preview, Photos, Safari, and the screenshot preview.
Why can't I select text in my screenshot?
Live Text needs a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or later) on macOS Monterey or newer. It can also struggle with very small, blurry, or low-contrast text — zooming in before selecting usually helps. Intel Macs don't support Live Text.
Can I copy text from a screenshot I no longer have the file for?
Live Text needs the image open somewhere. If you copied a screenshot and never saved it, macOS keeps only the most recent clipboard item, so it may be gone. A clipboard manager that records image history keeps every screenshot you copy, so you can reopen it and extract the text later.
Is there a keyboard shortcut to copy text from an image?
There's no single one-press shortcut. The fastest path is: select the image file in Finder, press Space for Quick Look, drag to select the text, and press ⌘C.
