How to Copy Text From an Image on Mac

Quick answer In Photos, Preview and Quick Look, macOS Live Text lets you select text in an image directly. For images inside chat apps, web apps or anywhere Live Text isn’t offered, copy the image and use Unpixel’s From Clipboard, or press ⇧⌘2 and drag over it.

Screenshots from a colleague, a photo of a whiteboard, a receipt, a sign, a product label — there’s text in images everywhere. Here’s how to get it out on a Mac.

Method 1: Live Text in Photos, Preview and Quick Look

Photos: open the photo, hover over the text until the pointer becomes a text cursor, drag to select and press ⌘C.
Preview: open the image and drag across the text the same way.
Quick Look: in Finder, select the image and press Space. You can often select text right in the preview.
Safari: many images on web pages support Live Text — try selecting the text in the image.

Nothing highlighting? Make sure Live Text is turned on in System Settings → General → Language & Region.

Method 2: Images in chat and web apps

Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, Teams and most web apps don’t offer Live Text inside their image viewers. Two quick options:

Copy the image (right-click → Copy Image), then click Unpixel in the menu bar and choose From Clipboard. The text replaces the image on your clipboard.
Or capture it on screen: press ⇧⌘2 and drag over the part of the image you need.

Method 3: Image files — including HEIC and WebP

With Unpixel, choose Open Image… (or drop files on the menu bar icon) to read PNG, JPEG, HEIC from your iPhone, TIFF, GIF, BMP and WebP. If the image contains a QR code or barcode, Unpixel copies what it encodes instead.

Bonus: from your iPhone

Your iPhone has Live Text too. Select text in a photo on the iPhone, copy it, and — with Handoff turned on — paste it on your Mac thanks to Universal Clipboard.

Tips for better recognition

Select only what you need. A tight selection avoids picking up stray labels and UI.
Straighten and light it. For photos of paper, a straight-on shot in good light beats any setting.
Serial numbers and codes: turn off language correction (Unpixel Settings → Recognition) so B0X-12O isn’t “corrected” into a word.
Addresses and lists: keep line breaks on to preserve the layout; turn it off for paragraphs.
Handwriting: neat print often works; cursive is hit and miss.

FAQ

Is my image uploaded to a server?

Not with Live Text or Unpixel — both recognize text on your Mac. Online “image to text” websites, by contrast, upload your image to someone else’s computer, which is worth avoiding for receipts, IDs and anything private.

Which languages work?

About 30, including English, the major European languages, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Thai and Vietnamese.