Video Text Selector

Cmd/Ctrl-click text inside any playing video to make it selectable and copyable, just like text on a webpage.

You've spotted something worth keeping — a quote in a talk, a code snippet in a screencast, an ingredient on a recipe card, a sign in a travel vlog, a bullet on a slide — and you reach for the keyboard only to remember it's pixels, not text. This extension turns those pixels into selectable text without pausing, screenshotting, or hunting for a transcript. How it works: Hold cmd (Mac) or ctrl (Win/Linux) and click on the text. A small frozen snapshot lifts off the video with the text now selectable underneath. Drag across what you want, hit cmd-c (or ctrl-c), and it's on your clipboard. The video never pauses. What you can select: - Single words and phrases - Full sentences across wrapped lines — they flow back into one paragraph on copy - Multi-line paragraphs with proper reading order - Bulleted lists, with each item kept on its own line - Headings and body text together, structure preserved What it works on: Most non-DRM HTML5 video on the open web — YouTube, lecture recordings, embedded video essays, slide-based talks, conference recordings, tutorials, and anywhere video plays in a standard <video> element. What it doesn't work on: DRM-protected content (Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, etc.). Protected video paths return blank frames to browser extensions by design — this is a platform-level limitation with no workaround. Privacy: Everything runs locally in your browser. The OCR engine is bundled into the extension. No frames or text are ever sent to a server, no data is collected, no account is needed, and no network requests are made. Open source: https://github.com/jobrienski/video-text-selector