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I made a macOS script that OCRs text on screen. It is super handy for dealing with everything from scanned documents with account numbers to web pages with text

I made a macOS script that OCRs text on screen. It is super handy for dealing with everything from scanned documents with account numbers to web pages with text in images. When I press F16, I get an image capture cursor, and the area selected is turned into text. Example: https://files.littlebird.com.au/Screen-Recording-2021-05-17-08-08-21-DxRy6BdGZanemgvHcV0bS5t77jD7.gif https://files.littlebird.com.au/Screen-Recording-2021-05-17-...

nicoburns 5y ago
Can you share it? That sounds pretty useful!
- jjgo 5y ago
  Not op, but I wrote something equivalent based on a linux script that I found [1]. Here's the mac version of the script [2]. You need tesseract [3] installed for the OCR. For launching it using a keyboard shortcut I use a hammerspoon [4]. Example of how I bind it [5] [1] https://github.com/sdushantha/bin/blob/master/utils/ocr https://github.com/sdushantha/bin/blob/master/utils/ocr [2] https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/bin/ocr https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/bin/ocr [3] https://pypi.org/project/pytesseract/ https://pypi.org/project/pytesseract/ [4] http://www.hammerspoon.org/ http://www.hammerspoon.org/ [5] https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/mac/.hammerspoon/keyboard.lua#L68 https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/mac/.hammerspoo...
  - schappim 5y ago
    Nice, I started with tesseract, but moved to Google Vision as the quality was better. Azure's offering was better for hand written notes.
    - jjgo 5y ago
      Interesting, that doesn't really work for me as I sometimes use it to OCR sensitive stuff from scanned documents, and it wouldn't work offline. I found tesseract to work pretty reliably for my use and only fail when scanning non-ASCII characters.
      - schappim 5y ago
        Yeah, I only use it for things where the context wouldn't matter. For example grabbing an account number from a document. I've been experimenting w/ CoreImage detectors (mainly for categorisation of scanned documents based on QR codes). When I clean things up today, I'll see what can be used.
deepdmistry 5y ago
Please share if possible, this is very useful
- jjgo 5y ago
  Not the original poster, but this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177609) how I do the same thing
schappim 5y ago
Edit: I'll clean the script up and make it available as a "Show HN:" soon.
- schappim 5y ago
  As promised, the Show HN is available here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27227925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27227925
  - nathansherburn 5y ago
    Thank you!
    - schappim 5y ago
      https://github.com/schappim/macocr https://github.com/schappim/macocr
NetOpWibby 5y ago
You have a hit on your hands. Let me (@NetOpWibby) know if you need a website built.

nicoburns 5y ago

Can you share it? That sounds pretty useful!

jjgo 5y ago
Not op, but I wrote something equivalent based on a linux script that I found [1]. Here's the mac version of the script [2]. You need tesseract [3] installed for the OCR. For launching it using a keyboard shortcut I use a hammerspoon [4]. Example of how I bind it [5] [1] https://github.com/sdushantha/bin/blob/master/utils/ocr https://github.com/sdushantha/bin/blob/master/utils/ocr [2] https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/bin/ocr https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/bin/ocr [3] https://pypi.org/project/pytesseract/ https://pypi.org/project/pytesseract/ [4] http://www.hammerspoon.org/ http://www.hammerspoon.org/ [5] https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/mac/.hammerspoon/keyboard.lua#L68 https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/mac/.hammerspoo...
- schappim 5y ago
  Nice, I started with tesseract, but moved to Google Vision as the quality was better. Azure's offering was better for hand written notes.
  - jjgo 5y ago
    Interesting, that doesn't really work for me as I sometimes use it to OCR sensitive stuff from scanned documents, and it wouldn't work offline. I found tesseract to work pretty reliably for my use and only fail when scanning non-ASCII characters.
    - schappim 5y ago
      Yeah, I only use it for things where the context wouldn't matter. For example grabbing an account number from a document. I've been experimenting w/ CoreImage detectors (mainly for categorisation of scanned documents based on QR codes). When I clean things up today, I'll see what can be used.

deepdmistry 5y ago

Please share if possible, this is very useful

jjgo 5y ago
Not the original poster, but this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177609) how I do the same thing

schappim 5y ago

Edit: I'll clean the script up and make it available as a "Show HN:" soon.

schappim 5y ago
As promised, the Show HN is available here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27227925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27227925
- nathansherburn 5y ago
  Thank you!
  - schappim 5y ago
    https://github.com/schappim/macocr https://github.com/schappim/macocr

NetOpWibby 5y ago

You have a hit on your hands. Let me (@NetOpWibby) know if you need a website built.