TextShot is a fast, native menu-bar tool that pulls plain text out of any pixel on your Mac - windows, PDFs, video frames, images, web pages, anything - straight to your clipboard, on-device.
Press a hotkey from any app, drag a box around the text you want, and let go - it is on your clipboard before your hand leaves the trackpad. No cloud, no upload, no waiting.
Highlights
- Pull text from anywhere - grab text from any pixel on screen: apps that block copy, PDFs, images, video frames, screenshots, web pages. If you can see it, you can pull it.
- One global hotkey - press
⌘⇧Tfrom any app or window; the shortcut is rebindable in the Shortcuts sheet. - Searchable history - your last 100 pulls are kept locally, searchable, and one click re-copies any of them.
- Code mode - keeps indentation and line breaks intact when you pull code or structured text.
- On device, off the cloud - recognition runs on Apple's built-in Vision engine. Nothing leaves your Mac.
- Lives in the menu bar - out of the way in the tray, launch at login, and light / dark / auto theme.
How it works
Press the hotkey and a transparent overlay covers every display. Drag a box around the text, and TextShot reads it with the macOS Vision engine and copies it to your clipboard. A toast confirms the grab, and your recent pulls stay a keystroke away in History.
Everything is keyboard-driven and stays on your Mac; settings - hotkeys, output options, and theme - persist locally.
Perfect for
- Developers & designers - lift a snippet, an error message, or UI copy that refuses to be selected.
- Researchers & writers - pull quotes out of PDFs, scans, and images without retyping.
- Anyone on a video call - grab text off a shared screen or a paused frame in seconds.
