OCR stands for optical character recognition. Sometimes you’ll have text you want to copy, but can’t directly copy, like hard subbed videos (subtitles burnt into the video itself):
Or text in a video game, etc. OCR is a program that lets you select the text, the program scans the text, and then copies the text to your clipboard, so you can then look it up more easily.
The current best solution on Windows is to use the Windows 11 built in OCR.
Windows 11 has OCR built into it. A simple method to utilize that OCR is to use the built-in Snipping Tool program, and then after you take your screenshot, use the OCR button at the bottom of the program. This solution is somewhat clumsy as it takes more time/steps than the other method described below, but it is very accurate:
Another method is to use Microsoft’s PowerToys, which is faster than the above method, but less accurate.
PowerToys is a program from Microsoft that extends the customizability of Windows via various tools. The tool we are interested in is the Text Extractor.
Download PowerToys and then setup Text Extractor. Use the hotkey you setup to select the text you want to OCR, and it will be copied to your clipboard.
An alternative solution besides the Windows OCR is to use ShareX, which is a program for screenshots, video recording, audio recording, and OCR. See the official ShareX Guide for more info.