A lightning-fast OCR utility for Windows. Extract text from anywhere on your screen — instantly. The full experience, with the latest OCR models and local AI, lives on the Microsoft Store.
No setup. No accounts. No cloud. Just the text you need, right now.
Hit your configured shortcut from anywhere in Windows — no need to switch apps.
Draw a box around any text on screen — a photo, video, app, PDF, anything.
The recognized text lands instantly in your clipboard, ready to paste anywhere.
From quick one-off grabs to power-user editing — Text Grab has a mode for it.
Draw a region around the text you need and it's in your clipboard instantly — or click a single word to grab just that. Works on any app, browser, game, PDF, or video. It's also the basis of the PowerToys Text Extractor.
Float a transparent overlay on top of any window. Text updates live as content changes, with built-in search so you can find exactly what you need.
Turn raw OCR into clean, usable content. Work in plain-text, markdown, or spreadsheet mode with regex extraction, find & replace, case conversion, a live Calc Pane, and batch image scanning.
Your personal hotkey-activated text snippet dictionary. Store frequently used phrases, codes, or templates and paste them in a flash.
Text Grab doesn't stop at capture. Patterns, position, and automation turn one good grab into a repeatable workflow — so you can capture text, find what matters, clean it up, and move it to the next step without switching apps.
Pick the engine that fits your machine and source: Windows AI on the NPU of a Copilot+ PC, the built-in Windows OCR, open-source Tesseract, or Direct Text that reads native UI elements with no OCR at all.
Clean and route text the instant it's captured. Trim each line, remove duplicates, fix GUID formatting, insert it into the active app, or open a web search — then save the combination as a reusable template.
Find and extract structured values — IDs, dates, prices, emails, phone numbers — even when the surrounding text is messy. Select a result and Text Grab suggests a pattern you can tune and save for next time.
Combine named capture regions, pattern placeholders, and output formatting into one reusable extraction. Run it on every similar screenshot, PDF, form, or invoice instead of rebuilding the steps each time.
Evaluate math, functions, unit conversions, and date math line by line right beside your text — and get sum, average, median, or min/max straight from spreadsheet selections, no second calculator needed.
Point Text Grab at a folder and extract text from every image or PDF in a single pass — recursively, with templates applied — then finish the combined results in the Edit Text Window.
Copying structured data off a web page usually means a mangled mess. The Text Grab browser extension makes pulling tables and lists feel effortless and natural — the rows, columns, and structure come along for the ride, so it pastes exactly the way it looked. Works on any Chromium browser, on any operating system.
Select a table or list and it lands on your clipboard with its formatting preserved — ready to paste as a real table, with the rows, columns, and merged cells (colspan / rowspan) intact. The extension writes both polished HTML and tab-separated text, so it drops in clean wherever you need it. No reformatting, no cleanup, no copy-paste gymnastics.
No desktop app required. Grab a table or list right in your browser and paste it directly into Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice Calc, Notion, or your docs — formatting and all. The extension alone is a complete copy-anything-structured tool.
Pair it with the Text Grab desktop app and capturing data gets even quicker — send a region or image straight into spreadsheet mode, run patterns and templates, OCR what isn't selectable, and pull from PDFs. The browser and desktop work as one fast pipeline.
Draw a box on any page and pick how to capture it: Table pulls structured data straight out (even detecting repeating layouts and grids), Direct Text copies the underlying text, and Screenshot sends it to Text Grab for OCR with scrolling and stitching for tall regions.
An integrated pdf.js viewer adds region capture to PDFs, and a right-click option sends any image to Text Grab for OCR — so even tables and text locked inside graphics become selectable.
One click hands a capture off to the desktop app for further refinement — patterns, templates, and the full Edit Text Window. Built with vanilla JS and isolated-world injection, so it even works on strict-CSP sites.
Free & open source · works on any Chromium browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Arc and more) on any OS. View the source on GitHub →
Designed from the ground up for Windows power users who value speed, privacy, and simplicity.
All OCR runs locally via the Windows OCR API. No cloud processing, no data sent anywhere, ever. Your screen contents stay on your machine.
From hotkey to clipboard in under a second. Zero startup time, zero friction. Integrates invisibly into your existing workflow.
Choose the right capture engine for the job — Windows AI on a Copilot+ PC's NPU for the highest accuracy, the built-in Windows OCR, Tesseract, or Direct Text. Translation and local AI tools are exclusive to the Microsoft Store version.
The source code is fully open on GitHub — audit it, fork it, or contribute. A free build is available for developers. The full-featured release with latest OCR and AI is on the Microsoft Store.
However you wrangle text — collecting it, cleaning it, digging through logs, or racing the clock — there's a way Text Grab fits into your day.
Bouncing between tools all day
Lives between a dozen browser tabs, a spreadsheet, and a chat window. The browser extension pulls tables and lists straight off the page with their formatting intact, and Text Grab cleans up whatever comes along for the ride — so the data you collect lands ready to use instead of needing a reformat.
Turning stacks of images into data
Has folders full of scanned pages, screenshots, and figures that all need to become searchable text. Point Text Grab at the folder and bulk OCR runs the whole set in a single pass — entirely on-device, so sensitive source material never leaves the machine.
Finding the signal in the logs
Scans walls of log output and config dumps for the one GUID, IP address, or error code that actually matters. Patterns & RegEx pull the structured values out of the noise, and Quick Simple Lookup keeps commands, connection strings, and boilerplate a single hotkey away.
Refuses to do it the slow way
Would rather build a tool than transcribe — again — an image a coworker emailed over. Keeps a trove of saved patterns and Grab Templates and a quiver of hand-crafted post-grab actions, collapsing every repetitive capture into one keystroke. Doing it the slow way simply isn't on the menu.
Plenty of tools can pull text off your screen. Few do it this fast, this privately, or with this much control.
| Feature | Text Grab | PowerToys Text Extractor |
Windows Snipping Tool |
Cloud OCR apps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runs fully offline, on-device | ||||
| Choice of OCR engines Windows AI, WinRT, Tesseract |
||||
| Edit & clean up captured text in place | ||||
| Grab tables & lists with formatting intact | ||||
| Reads QR codes | ||||
| Browser extension included | ||||
| Open source |
Comparison reflects typical default behavior; third-party tools vary. Got a tool we should add? Let us know.
Pick the track that matches your machine. Whether it's your own PC or a locked-down work laptop, there's a path that fits.
It's your machine — install it however suits you.
No technical setup. One click installs the complete Text Grab — the latest Windows OCR models, local AI and translation for Copilot+ PCs, and automatic updates. Buying it supports Joe's continued work.
Get on Microsoft StoreA raw .exe from GitHub for power users comfortable with manual setup. Open-source build — no AI features and no auto-updates, so you manage versions yourself.
winget install text-grab
scoop install text-grab
choco install text-grab
On a managed or locked-down machine? Try these in order — stop at the first one your IT policy allows.
Install it from the Store just like any other approved app. You get the full experience with automatic updates, and nothing extra to configure.
Open in Microsoft StoreDownload the digitally signed build and run it — the Authenticode signature is what SmartScreen and AppLocker check, so no admin install is required on many managed PCs.
Get the signed buildAsk for a signed .msix package your IT team can review and deploy through their managed channels. Reach out and Joe will get one to you.
Everything you might be wondering before you grab your first bit of text.
No. Text Grab runs completely locally and works fully offline. OCR is performed on your machine using the built-in Windows OCR API (or Windows AI on a Copilot+ PC) — nothing about your screen or captured text is ever uploaded to a server.
Text Grab is a Windows desktop app and runs on Windows 10 and Windows 11. The browser extension works on any Chromium browser — Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Arc and more — on any operating system.
Very accurate for clear, reasonably sized text. You can pick the engine that fits the job — Windows AI on a Copilot+ PC's NPU for the highest accuracy, the built-in Windows OCR, Tesseract, or Direct Text. Results depend on the resolution and clarity of what's on screen, so zooming in a little helps with small fonts.
Text Grab picks the best available engine for your hardware, and you can switch between them anytime:
Whichever model runs, everything happens locally on your device — no captured text or images are sent anywhere.
Yes. If you can see it on your screen, Text Grab can grab it — including text inside images, PDFs, paused videos, error dialogs, and other apps that normally won't let you select text.
Yes. Text Grab uses the OCR language packs installed on your system, so it recognizes many languages. You can add more languages through Windows settings. Translation tools are also available in the Microsoft Store version.
Open an issue on GitHub, or email joe@textgrab.net. Feedback and feature ideas are always welcome.