Grab text from anywhere on your screen — instantly.
A tiny macOS menu bar app that captures any region of your screen and copies the recognized text straight to your clipboard, using Apple's built-in on-device OCR.
- ⌘⇧2 anywhere — press the global shortcut in any app to start a crop selection.
- Instant OCR — text is recognized with Apple's Vision framework (on-device, private, no network) and copied to your clipboard immediately.
- Native crop UI — uses the built-in macOS screen-capture crosshair; multi-monitor and Retina aware.
- Lives in the menu bar — no Dock icon, no clutter. A quick toast shows what was copied.
- Customizable shortcut — click to record any key combination; it's captured exclusively so other apps don't also fire it.
- Universal binary — runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.
- Download
Snaptext.dmgfrom the latest release. - Open the DMG and drag Snaptext into Applications.
- Launch Snaptext from Applications. It appears in your menu bar (look for the text-scan icon).
On first launch, Snaptext opens a small window asking for two permissions:
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Accessibility | Lets the global ⌘⇧2 shortcut work system-wide (and be captured exclusively). |
| Screen Recording | Lets Snaptext capture the region you select. |
Click Allow on each and grant them in System Settings. Then press ⌘⇧2 anywhere to capture text.
- Press ⌘⇧2 (or click Capture Text in the menu bar).
- Drag to select the region containing text.
- The recognized text is copied to your clipboard and shown briefly in a toast at the bottom of the screen.
- Change the shortcut anytime from the menu bar → Shortcut tab → click the field and press a new combination.
- macOS (recent versions).
- Apple Silicon or Intel — the release is a universal binary.
Open Snaptext.xcodeproj in Xcode and run the Snaptext scheme. It's a plain AppKit app — no third-party dependencies. All OCR and screen capture use built-in macOS frameworks (Vision + screencapture).
Everything runs locally on your Mac. Snaptext never sends your screen or text anywhere — OCR happens on-device via Apple's Vision framework, and recognized text goes only to your clipboard.
MIT