Download TextMan 1.9 (Mac) – Download Free

Web developers sometimes make it difficult to copy text from a page, and there are various types of media in which text may be visible but not selectable. To extract it quickly, without having to type it all, you need an OCR tool.

text man is such a tool. It allows you to take a screenshot of the desktop area and automatically detects and extracts any text in it. It’s designed to be quick and easy to use, all with keyboard shortcuts.

Extract text with simple hotkeys

Once the application is up and running, just press ⌘⇧2 Start taking screenshots. Shortcuts can be customized. Once the area is selected, if any text is detected, it will be captured and sent to the clipboard. Then you can paste it anywhere you like.

When grabbing a new snapshot, the existing text in the clipboard will be replaced, but you can still access previous captures from the menu bar. Past clips are stored for one minute by default, but you can extend this time or keep them indefinitely.

Preview text and read aloud

When text is detected and copied to the clipboard, you can configure the app to also briefly display it on the desktop as a notification in the lower right corner of the screen.

From here, you can also choose to play the text aloud, which is an easy way to tell if the text was extracted correctly.

Accurately detect text and preserve formatting

The main goal of TextMan is its intuitive design. If you’ve ever captured screenshots in macOS, you can use this app.

Text extraction is very accurate, which is to be expected given the advances in OCR technology. When pasting, the formatting of the text is also copied, including line breaks. Option to remove line breaks may be helpful as manual formatting of the text may be required to remove them.

Overall, TextMan is for anyone who needs an easy-to-use text extraction tool. It has no learning curve to speak of and provides accurate results in no time.