OCR (Image to Text)

Extract text from scanned PDFs or images using your browser.

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OCR Online: Convert Images & PDF to Editable Text

Turn scanned documents, photos of receipts, and non-selectable PDFs into editable text instantly. Our browser-based OCR technology is free, unlimited, and 100% private.

What is OCR Technology?

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a technology that converts different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, PDF files, or images captured by a digital camera, into editable and searchable data.

Without OCR, a scanned contract is just a picture—a collection of pixels that computer software cannot "read." ToolMini's OCR analyzes these pixels, identifies letter shapes (like 'A', 'b', '7'), and reconstructs them into words and sentences that you can copy, paste, and edit in Word or Notepad.

How Our "Client-Side" OCR Respects Your Privacy

Processing image data requires significant computing power. Historically, this meant websites had to upload your private files to powerful remote servers to read the text.

ToolMini revolutionizes this. We use advanced Tesseract.js technology to run the OCR engine directly in your web browser.

Zero-Upload Guarantee: Whether you are scanning a confidential medical report, a legal summons, or a personal diary entry, the file never leaves your computer. The text extraction happens on your device, ensuring total privacy.

Tips for Best Accuracy

The quality of the output depends heavily on the quality of the input image. Follow these guidelines for the best results:

  • High Resolution: Use images with at least 300 DPI. Blurry text is hard for the AI to read.
  • Good Lighting: Avoid shadows or glare if taking a photo with a phone. Even lighting helps distinct letters stand out.
  • Standard Fonts: Standard printed fonts (Arial, Times New Roman) work best. Handwriting or decorative cursive scripts may not be recognized accurately.
  • Contrast: Black text on a white background yields the highest accuracy. Dark backgrounds with light text can be problematic.

Common Use Cases

Digitizing Paper Archives

Convert boxes of old physical files into searchable digital text formats like TXT, reducing clutter and making information retrieval instant.

Extracting Text from Photos

Took a picture of a whiteboard, a book page, or a street sign? Instantly copy the text from the image instead of re-typing it manually.

Data Entry Automation

Quickly pull numbers and addresses from scanned invoices or receipts to paste into Excel spreadsheets.

Mobile Productivity

Use your phone to scan a document and convert it to text on the fly, perfect for students and researchers on the go.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Yes, it is 100% free. You can scan and convert as many pages or images as you need without any daily limits or watermarks.

OCR technology is optimized for printed text. It struggles with handwriting, especially cursive or messy script. Neat block letters may be recognized, but accuracy is significantly lower than machine-printed text.

Currently, our engine is optimized for English data. We plan to add multi-language support (Spanish, French, German, Chinese) in upcoming updates.

Yes. Unlike most OCR sites, we process files locally in your browser. Your sensitive documents (ID cards, bank statements) are never uploaded to the cloud, ensuring complete privacy.

This tool extracts raw text (.txt). If you need to convert a PDF to a formatted Word document (.docx), please use our dedicated PDF to Word tool.

This usually happens if the image is low quality, blurry, or rotated incorrectly. Ensure the text is horizontal and the image is sharp. Also, complex layouts with multiple columns can sometimes confuse the line reader.

Yes! Since it runs in the web browser, it works on smartphones and tablets. Note that processing might be slower on mobile devices compared to desktop computers due to hardware limitations.

We support standard image formats (JPG, PNG, BMP) and PDF files. For PDFs, the tool will process each page individually to extract text.

Our current engine extracts raw text stream (plain text). It attempts to maintain line breaks, but it does not reconstruct complex tables, bold text, or fonts.

There is no hard limit, but because processing happens in your browser, very large PDFs or ultra-high-resolution images might crash the tab if your computer runs out of RAM.

On the first use, the engine (Tesseract.js) needs to download the language data model (~20MB). Subsequent uses will be faster as the model is cached in your browser.

Yes. After processing, the text appears in a text box. You can use the "Copy" button to instantly copy it to your clipboard or download it as a .txt file.