Lifehacker [Japanese version] Reprinted from an article published on November 2021
With macOS Monterey, you can finally copy text from photos on your Mac.
Whether you want to save time in class or quickly copy a phone number from a business card, it would be great if you could select and copy the text in the photo. This time I will explain how to do it.
How to copy text in images on Mac
On macOS Monterey, not only can you translate text at lightning speed, you can now select text in images. The feature, called Live Text, is available on iPhones and iPads running iOS 15.
If there is text in the image you are viewing on your Mac, try dragging the mouse pointer towards it. The cursor changes from an arrow to a selection tool.
Clicking and dragging the cursor over text selects the text.
When text is selected, right-click (or "control-click") to bring up the context menu.
Here you can choose to copy the text, translate it, or use the Look Up tool to quickly find more information about the selected text.
For example, if you see the name of a famous tourist destination like "Niagara Falls" in a photo, you can use "look up" to look up that entry on Wikipedia. Similarly, searching for an address will bring up a floating window showing the location in the Maps app.
Text recognition viewing works seamlessly most of the time, but currently only in Safari, Photos, the built-in screenshot tool, and Quick Look (a tool that allows you to quickly preview images and documents by pressing the spacebar). works.
Sometimes the cursor doesn't immediately change to the selection tool, but clicking the image once fixes this problem.
Another limitation is that Text Recognition View currently only supports Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, and if the text in the image is written in other languages. This function cannot be used if
How to copy text in images on older macOS
If you haven't upgraded to macOS Monterey yet, you can use TextSniper to copy text from images. The app has a 7-day free trial (via Setapp), after which it's $6.99.
TextSniper has several advantages over Apple's text recognition display.
First, clicking and dragging a large area will automatically capture all the text within it, saving you the time of selecting text in the image.
You can also use the keyboard shortcut "Command + Shift + 2" for this feature of the app, so it's easy to use. Moreover, this feature is not limited to some apps on Mac.
Sadly, TextSniper doesn't officially support Monterey yet.
macOS Big Sur supports English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and Spanish. macOS Catalina supports English only.
Source: Apple, TextSniper