SnipText — OCR for any image or webpage

Select any area on a webpage and extract text from images using OCR — no backend needed.

SnipText turns your browser into a fast, private OCR tool. Just click, drag a box around any text on any webpage or image, and copy the result — in seconds. Unlike most OCR extensions, SnipText runs entirely in your browser using WebAssembly. Your screenshots never get uploaded to a server. There's no account, no signup, and no paywall. KEY FEATURES - Region selection — draw a box around exactly what you want, no need to right-click or save images first - On-device OCR powered by Tesseract — screenshots stay in your browser - Works on any image: photos, memes, screenshots, infographics, charts, PDFs open in the browser, code snippets, scanned docs - Works on sites that block copy-paste or lock text inside images - Supports 100+ languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Arabic, and more - No signup, no account, no ads, no tracking - Free COMMON USES - Copy code from screenshots in tutorials, Stack Overflow posts, or tweets - Grab quotes from memes, infographics, and social media images - Extract text from sites that disable text selection or protect content - Pull text out of scanned documents or PDFs opened in your browser - Copy text from YouTube thumbnails or paused video frames - Read captions and labels in images from forums, wikis, and news sites - Prepare text for translation: grab it first, then paste into any translator HOW IT WORKS 1. Click the SnipText icon in your toolbar (or pin it for one-click access) 2. Drag a selection box around the text you want 3. The recognized text appears in a popup, ready to copy Your screenshot is cropped, processed locally by the OCR engine inside your browser, and then discarded. Nothing is stored on any server. PRIVACY SnipText does not collect any personal data. It does not log your browsing, read page content, track clicks, or use analytics. The only setting it saves is your chosen OCR language. The one network request SnipText makes is a one-time download of the Tesseract language model from a public CDN the first time you use a new language. After that, OCR runs entirely offline. Full privacy policy: [PASTE YOUR HOSTED PRIVACY POLICY URL HERE] LANGUAGE SUPPORT Built on Tesseract 5, SnipText supports 100+ languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and Hindi. Switch the active language from the popup menu. PERMISSIONS — WHY THEY'RE NEEDED - activeTab, scripting, tabs — capture a screenshot of the current tab and show the selection overlay - offscreen — run the OCR engine in a hidden background document (required by Chrome for WebAssembly OCR) - storage — remember your chosen OCR language - access to all sites — so SnipText works on any website SnipText never reads page content and never sends anything you select to a server.