The app icon. It's an uppercased T surrounded by a hexagon to make it look like a super hero symbol.

TextMan - Select, Detect, and Paste

Never get annoyed by not selectable text on websites*, PDFs, images, videos or system user interfaces again. Just select the region of your screen in the same manner as you would take a screenshot and find all recognized text in your clipboard ready to get pasted anywhere.
All processing is done locally. This app contains no tracking or analyzing frameworks. No data is shared.

*as, for example, this page does for some inexplicable reason

Download on the Mac App Store Try For Free Buy for $3.99*

*This is a one time purchase with no recurring payments. If you are not satisfied, you can get your money back for 7 days.

Features

  • Select Screen Region

    Select any text on your screen by drawing a rectangle to start OCR detection*. Use it with web sites, PDFs, videos, and images. Basically anything that is text and is on your screen.

    *scanned text can be English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese (both simplified and traditional)

  • Let it float

    See the scanned text in an overlay and let it read aloud from macOS.

  • Paste anywhere

    Have all detected text in your clipboard ready to paste it into every text field.

  • Find it

    Hold down the Command Key (⌘) to find the recognized text with your favorite search engine.

  • Don't Repeat Yourself

    Your scanned texts are collected in a workflow list and can be restored to your clipboard.

Changelog

TextMan has a weekly scheduled release cycle as long as there are so many things on the roadmap.

  • Version 1.9 – Drag'n'Drop going full circle

    Sep 13, 2022

    You can now drag text from previews into any textfield or Finder.

  • Version 1.8 – “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

    Sep 9, 2022

    Finally a german localization was added.

  • Version 1.7.1 – Bug fixes. Really!

    Aug 30, 2022

    The phrase may be worn out, but it's really true. :)

  • Version 1.7 – Drop it like it's hot

    Aug 22, 2022

    You can now import supported images and PDF files and convert images from the clipboard directly into text.

  • Version 1.6.1 – Under the magnifying glass

    Aug 18, 2022

    The visualization of the capture action has been improved. You can now clearly see whether you will copy text to the clipboard or search for it in your browser.

  • Version 1.6 – LMGTFY!

    Aug 16, 2022

    Adds option to hold down Command (⌘) when capturing and to start searching the recognized text in any search engine.

  • 1.5 – Let’s talk about Text!

    Aug 9, 2022

    Adds a button to the overlay to let the scanned text read out aloud

  • 1.4.1 – whereami

    Aug 2, 2022

    Fixes overlay position when more than one monitor is available

  • 1.4 – WYSIWYG

    Jul 28, 2022

    Adds an overlay preview of the recognized text

  • 1.3 – Attribution is everything

    Jul 19, 2022

    Some small bug fixes and a new button to see all used open-source libraries

  • 1.2 – History is now a workflow

    Jul 12, 2022

    Scan text snippets one by one and then export them all at once!

  • 1.1 – Someone gave me a history lesson

    Jul 5, 2022

    Adds a menu item to access recently captured text items

  • 1.0

    Jun 30, 2022

    Initial release