Mac Automator service that will try to grab English text from a screenshot selection. Please note that Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is not perfect and can only make a best guess.
- Save
.workflowfile to{YOUR HOME DIRECTORY}/Library/Services. - Go to
System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services. - In the list of services shown, select
General > Get Screenshot Text (English). - Click on
Add Shortcutbutton next to it, and type in any sequence of keys you want as a trigger for this new service.- Make sure it's unique and not an existing keyboard shortcut for anything else.
- If you want to follow the existing pattern for the built-in screenshot shortcuts, refer to
System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Screenshots.
- Type in the keyboard shortcut you created during workflow installation.
- This should prompt you select a screenshot.
- For best accuracy, try to select an area that only has English words -- no other icons, symbols, or pictures.
- The detected English text will be pasted onto a new TextEdit document.
- If there are any mistakes in text recognition, you can tweak it as needed before using the data as you need.