Chrome extension · Use case

Extract Text From Images While Browsing the Web

You're browsing a webpage and see text locked inside an image — a screenshot, an infographic, a quote card, or a photo of a document. You need that text, but you can't select it. PickText OCR is a free Chrome extension that extracts text from any image on a webpage using local OCR processing.

Updated 26 February 20262 min read4 steps

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The Problem

Text embedded in images is everywhere on the web: social media posts shared as screenshots, pricing tables rendered as images, code snippets in blog post images, handwritten notes photographed and shared. Manually retyping this text is slow and error-prone. You need a way to extract it instantly, without leaving the page.

How It Works

  1. Install the OCR extension

    Install PickText OCR from the Chrome Web Store. It adds a toolbar icon and right-click context menu options.

  2. Choose your capture method

    Right-click any image and select 'Extract text from image', or click the extension icon and choose Screenshot (full page) or Select Region (draw a rectangle around specific content).

  3. Review the extracted text

    OCR runs locally using Tesseract.js WASM — your images never leave your device. Results appear with word-level confidence highlighting: green for high confidence, yellow for medium, red for low.

  4. Copy or export the text

    Click Copy to copy the extracted text to your clipboard. If tables are detected, export as CSV. Results are saved in your local history for later reference.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the extension upload my images to a server?
No. All OCR processing runs locally in your browser using Tesseract.js WASM. Your images never leave your device. This is a key advantage over extensions like Copyfish that upload images to external servers.
What languages does it support?
16 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Korean, Arabic, Hindi, and Turkish. English is bundled; other languages download on first use and are cached.
Can I OCR a specific area of the page?
Yes. The Select Region feature lets you draw a rectangle around any area of the page — useful for extracting text from a specific section of a screenshot, infographic, or mixed-content page.
Does it work on any website?
It works on any regular webpage. It cannot be injected into browser system pages (chrome://, about:) or other extensions' pages due to browser security restrictions.
What about full PDF OCR?
The Chrome extension handles images and screenshots. For OCRing multi-page scanned PDFs, use the full OCR tool at oneclickpdf.net/tools/ocr, which supports PDF input, searchable PDF output, and batch processing.

Stop retyping text from images. With the PickText OCR Chrome extension, extract text from any image on any webpage in seconds — right-click, screenshot, or select a region. Everything processes locally on your device. For full PDF OCR with searchable PDF output, use the web app at oneclickpdf.net/tools/ocr.

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See PickText OCR