I didn't test the x11/wayland check yet, but feel free to use it and report back.

  #!/bin/bash 
  # Dependencies: tesseract-ocr imagemagick 
  # on gnome: gnome-screenshot 
  # on kde: spectacle
  # on x11: xsel
  # on wayland: wl-clipboard

  die(){
  notify-send "$1"
  exit 1
  }
  cleanup(){
  [[ -n $1 ]] &&  rm -rf "$1"
  }

  SCR_IMG=$(mktemp)  || die "failed to take screenshot"

  # shellcheck disable=SC2064
  trap "cleanup '$SCR_IMG'" EXIT

  notify-send "Select the area of the text" 
  if  which "spectacle" &> /dev/null
  then
    spectacle -r -o "$SCR_IMG.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"
  else
    gnome-screenshot -a -f "$SCR_IMG.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"
  fi

  # increase image quality with option -q from default 75 to 100
  mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% "$SCR_IMG.png"  || die "failed to convert image"
  #should increase detection rate

  tesseract "$SCR_IMG.png" "$SCR_IMG" &> /dev/null || die "failed to extract text"
  if [ "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE" == "wayland" ]
  then 
  wl-copy 

Formatting

  #!/bin/bash 
  # Dependencies: tesseract-ocr imagemagick 
  # on gnome: gnome-screenshot 
  # on kde: spectacle
  # on x11: xsel
  # on wayland: wl-clipboard
  
  die(){
    notify-send "$1"
    exit 1
  }
  cleanup(){
    [[ -n $1 ]] && rm -r "$1"
  }
  
  SCR_IMG=$(mktemp -d) || die "failed to take screenshot"
  
  # shellcheck disable=SC2064
  trap "cleanup '$SCR_IMG'" EXIT
  
  #notify-send "Select the area of the text" 
  if  which "spectacle" &> /dev/null
  then
    spectacle -b -r -o "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"
  else
    gnome-screenshot -a -f "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"
  fi
  
  # increase image quality with option -q from default 75 to 100
  mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% "$SCR_IMG/scr.png"  || die "failed to convert image"
  #should increase detection rate
  
  tesseract "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" "$SCR_IMG/scr" &> /dev/null || die "failed to extract text"
  if [ "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE" == "wayland" ]
  then 
    wl-copy 

Also made some minor modifications: replaced `xsel` with `xclip` and added truncated version of the copied text to the `notify-send`:

  #!/bin/bash 
  # Dependencies: tesseract-ocr imagemagick 
  # on gnome: gnome-screenshot 
  # on kde: spectacle
  # on x11: xsel
  # on wayland: wl-clipboard

  die(){
    notify-send "$1"
    exit 1
  }
  cleanup(){
    [[ -n $1 ]] && rm -r "$1"
  }

  SCR_IMG=$(mktemp -d) || die "failed to take screenshot"

  # shellcheck disable=SC2064
  trap "cleanup '$SCR_IMG'" EXIT

  #notify-send "Select the area of the text" 
  if  which "spectacle" &> /dev/null
  then
    spectacle -n -b -r -o "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"
  else
    gnome-screenshot -a -f "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"
  fi

  # increase image quality with option -q from default 75 to 100
  mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% "$SCR_IMG/scr.png"  || die "failed to convert image"
  #should increase detection rate

  tesseract "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" "$SCR_IMG/scr" &> /dev/null || die "failed to extract text"
  if [ "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE" == "wayland" ]
  then 
    wl-copy 

For anyone running into barriers, mate-screenshot has no outfile `-f` option, so I worked around that by outputting through clipboard and capturing that with `xclip` (note, this is earlier in the script than the the xsel/xclip line in the parent and gp comments):

  mate-screenshot -a -c && xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png -o > "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"

  (xclip -selection clipboard -i 

Why did you remove the -f parameter?

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    langs=(eng ara fas chi_sim chi_tra deu ell fin heb hun jpn kor nld rus tur)
    lang=$(printf '%s\n' "${langs[@]}" | fuzzel -d "$@")
    grim -g "$(slurp)" - | mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% png:- | tesseract -l eng+${lang} - - | wl-copy
    notify-send "Text extracted"

My version has more feedback for the user which was important because the user was somebody not familiar with linux/bash, but even my version "swallows" errors.

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    langs=(eng ara fas chi_sim chi_tra deu ell fin heb hun jpn kor nld rus tur)
    lang=$(printf '%s\n' "${langs[@]}" | dmenu "$@")
    maim -us | tesseract --dpi 145 -l eng+${lang} - - | xsel -bi

    # shellcheck disable=SC2064
    trap "cleanup '$SCR_IMG'" EXIT

The command passed to `trap` is evaluated normally, so variable expansions do take place.

    trap 'cleanup "$SCR_IMG"' EXIT

Alternatively, if you're using a modern bash (this probably won't work on a mac by default), then this is an option too:

    trap "cleanup ${SCR_IMG@Q}" EXIT

  #!/bin/bash
  # Dependencies: tesseract-ocr imagemagick scrot xsel

  IMG=`mktemp`
  trap "rm $IMG*" EXIT

  scrot -s $IMG.png -q 100
  # increase image quality with option -q from default 75 to 100

  mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% $IMG.png
  #should increase detection rate

  tesseract $IMG.png $IMG &> /dev/null
  cat $IMG.txt | xsel -bi
  notify-send "Text copied" "$(cat $IMG.txt)"

  exit

    maim -s --nodrag --quality=10 $IMG.png

    import "$tempfile"
    TEXT=`tesseract -l eng+deu "$tempfile" stdout`
    echo "$TEXT" | xsel -i -b

I'd love to if TextSnatcher does anything to improve on this. The github page is opaque.

https://github.com/RajSolai/TextSnatcher/blob/master/src/ser...

The script calls Tesseract in default page segmentation mode (PSM 3). [1]

Depending on the input text, PSM mode 11 for disconnected text would probably work much better. That uses the flag "--psm 11".

[1] From the original repo: string tess_command = "tesseract " + file_path + " " + out_path + @" -l $lang" ;

Granted there's a lot of ambiguity in sans serif fonts, lower-case "L", vertical bar, and upper-case "i" can even be pixel-identical, but I've seen tesseract turn

  Chapter III

  Chapter |l1

Apologies to all of my fellow Unix-Windows borderers.

  trap "rm $IMG*" EXIT

also, use mktemp -d and recursively delete the directory

I just really don't know, it feels like it's, uh, subpar. Isn't it? I never seriously worked in that domain, but it somehow felt to me in the 2019, that with all recent advancements in computer vision, text recognition must be essentially a solved problem. I'd expect it to be better than human. Yet I still cannot accurately convert a low-res scan (scan! not even a photo!) of a receipt with tesseract, especially if it isn't in English. Maybe I just cannot properly use it?

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys

WIN+SHIFT+S

If it doesn't have the "Text actions" icon (dashed square with paragraph lines in it), you can update it via windows store to get the latest version.

Myself I tried it probably 10-15 years ago on scanned scientific papers (decent scanning quality). The results were disappointing. The manual postprocessing required was not much less than typing it directly. So tesseract became a synonym of "not worth trying" to me.

Maybe things have improved over the years, so I should give it a new try. (No particular use case at the moment, but those tend to appear occasionally.)

Being a Flatpak app, it will require desktop portals to fully work. That said, it worked absolutely fine out of the box for me with my existing xdg-desktop-portal-wlr setup. So, it should work fine in any X11 or Wayland setup where you have an xdg-desktop-portal setup that supports the Screenshot API.

The results are mixed, but not bad by any means. Cleanly readable text comes out mostly fine with maybe only whitespace issues and the occasional error, which makes this still potentially very useful for copying text out of error dialogs and whatnot. (Though, I've found that on Linux, error dialogs are far more likely to have selectable text in the first place. And on Windows, standard MessageBox responds to Ctrl+C.)

I like the author.

- take screenshot

- extract text from it

- translate the text to english. Auto detects source language

- show both original and translated text in quick view where you can select and copy if desired.

Here is a implementation you can try:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/f420d24e4960415da1a43f230ab...

While on the subject of iOS. In recent versions when you open a photo in the photos app you can also select the text in the photo by hand and copy it.

Caveat: This is a Flatpak and not all Linux distros ship with Flatpak. But I'll give it a whirl in my Fedora virtual machine. I've seen many flavors of this type of tool floating about, most of them leveraging Tesseract[0], and I've tried a few of them. It fails badly on grainy / noisy images or where the text is warped or skewed in some way. It will not solve CAPTCHAs for you!

[0] https://tesseract-ocr.github.io/tessdoc/Home.html

Flatpak should work on every distro. However, it may not be included by default, so you need to install flatpak before installing this application.

Probably quite the overkill in terms of energy efficiency for just image to text, but I only need this like once every two weeks or so.

[1] https://github.com/dynobo/normcap

  #!/bin/bash
  # Performs Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on a freely chosen
  # screen area and copies the recognized text to the clipboard.
  #
  # Dependencies: sudo apt install gnome-screenshot tesseract-ocr xclip
  
  IMAGE_FILE="/tmp/ocr.png"
  
  gnome-screenshot --area --file "$IMAGE_FILE"
  tesseract "$IMAGE_FILE" - | xclip -rmlastnl -selection clipboard
  
  rm -f "$IMAGE_FILE"

(would definitely appreciate feedback/critiques from any swifties out there)

Also code not being updated is something, TLS certificate not being renewed is in an other league in terms of lack of support of the project.

https://robbyzambito.me/posts/tips-and-tricks-for-taking-scr...

    mkdir -p ~/Pictures/Screenshots

very nice though thanks for sharing!

If that's really the case then obviously don't use it for personal data (invoices, love letters, legal proceedings, ...)

https://github.com/RajSolai/TextSnatcher/blob/9e67760d6c16ea...

Tesseract itself seems to be included in the Flatpak as you'd expect:

https://github.com/RajSolai/TextSnatcher/blob/master/manifes...

Where did you get that?

https://support.apple.com/guide/preview/interact-with-text-i...

https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/interact-with-text-in...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212630

If anyone has anything near a Linux equivalent, please let me know.

I take a photo, grab the text and send it via WhatsApp web app.

Not easy as a clip to clipboard but I haven’t found any on windows.

If you're on Android 14 you can also copy text through the recents/overview menu simply by highlighting the text. And finally there's Google Photos if you don't have any of these features.

There's also Google lens if you're trying to copy text that isn't on your screen.

Source: helped a friend with the feature recently, he didn’t know it exists.

Side note, what a breath of fresh air Gnome on Fedora is!

[1] https://github.com/amebalabs/TRex

It's remarkable how much more polished Gnome is from a few years ago. If you use 2FA TOTP, make sure to install Gnome Authenticator if you haven't already. If you use Aegis on Android (or a handful of other formats) it can import/export your seeds. It is downright luxurious having this on my laptop/desktop:

    # If you haven't setup flathub yet
    sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
    
    # Install Authenticator from flathub.  Source:  https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Authenticator
    sudo flatpak install flathub com.belmoussaoui.Authenticator

[0]: https://github.com/RhetTbull/textinator