Image to Text
Extract text from any image (JPG, PNG, WebP, and more) in 100+ languages. Runs in your browser — images never leave your device.
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How to Use the Image to Text
Upload an image containing text by dragging it into the upload zone or clicking to browse. Select the language of the text in your image and choose an optimization mode (Document, Photo, Screenshot, or Handwriting). Click Extract Text — on first use, the OCR engine and language data download to your browser and cache for future use. The extracted text appears in an editable panel with word-level confidence highlighted on the image. Copy or download the result as plain text.
About This Tool
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that runs entirely in your browser using Tesseract.js, an open-source OCR engine compiled to WebAssembly. No image ever leaves your device — safe for confidential documents, identity documents, and sensitive files. Supports 20+ languages including English, Icelandic, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and more. Works best on high-resolution images with clear, printed text and even lighting. Related: PDF to Text for extracting text from PDF documents, and check document length to verify the extracted text meets your target length.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is my image uploaded to a server?
No. Tesseract OCR runs entirely in your browser using WebAssembly. Your image is processed locally and never sent to any server. This makes the tool safe for personal documents, identity documents, and confidential files.
Why does the first use take longer?
On first use, the tool downloads the Tesseract OCR engine (~2MB) and the language training data (~4–12MB depending on the language). These files are cached in your browser after the first download — subsequent uses start immediately.
Why is the accuracy poor on my image?
OCR accuracy depends heavily on image quality. The most common causes of poor results are: wrong language selected, low image resolution, blurry or out-of-focus text, uneven lighting or shadows, and skewed or rotated text. Use high-resolution images (at least 300 DPI) for best results.
Can it read handwriting?
Tesseract has limited ability to read handwriting. It was primarily designed and trained on printed text. For clear, neat handwriting it may produce partial results, but accuracy is significantly lower than for typed or printed text.
What languages are supported?
Tesseract supports over 100 languages including English, Icelandic, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, and many others. Select the correct language for your image for the best accuracy.
Can I extract text from a PDF?
For text-based PDFs, use the PDF to Text tool which extracts text directly without OCR. For scanned PDFs (where pages are images), convert them to images first using PDF to Images, then use this tool on each page image.
Created by The Toobits Team · Engineering & Editorial
Toobits is built, tested, and maintained by a small independent engineering team. Every tool is written in TypeScript, runs entirely in the browser, and is reviewed against its source formulas before publication.
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