macOCR
Dev tools
screen ocr utility
SHOW HN2021
321points
80comments
#110of 2,533 in 2021
Top 5%of 2021 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
10 positive, 14 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 3 critical, out of 28 comments about the project. Thread score +0.24.
Idea: 5 for, 1 againstExecution: 1 for, 1 againstPerformance: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
OCR quality better than Tesseract on screenshots
From 2 comments
The problem with Naptha is that the OCR quality of Tesseract (used by Project Naptha) is not very good for screenshots. Historically Tesseract has been optimized for text…
eastendguy on HNI’ve tried with Tesseract, the Vision API, Google Vision and Azure’s equivalent (also kicked off using an Alfred workflow). By far the best for text was Google Vision and then…
schappim on HN
Objections
Requires macOS Catalina or later, fails on Mojave
From 3 comments
It's barfing due to missing libraries on my machine, anyone know what OS version this requires?
Rebelgecko on HNThat is _exactly_ what I've been looking for the past 5 years! Unfortunately I am still on Mojave, so of course I get an error: dyld: Symbol not found:…
fdeage on HNShould be Catalina and above, I’ll add it to the docs. I’ve tested on an i9 running Catalina and M1 forced to be on Big Sur.
schappim on HN
Built-in Vision OCR is lower quality than cloud OCR
From 1 comment
I’ve tried with Tesseract, the Vision API, Google Vision and Azure’s equivalent (also kicked off using an Alfred workflow). By far the best for text was Google Vision and then…
schappim on HN
Requests
Support for tables and spreadsheet output
From 1 comment
Really nice! Would love if it supported tables. Have struggled to find any OCR that can take a photo of a table and turn it into a spreadsheet. It’s usually an inconsistently…
keepshoutingsir on HN
Non-English and handwritten text support
From 2 comments
Hmm does this support non-English languages?
cheeaun on HNOutstanding. I have a question, and it's not a complaint or a request for anything except a bit of data: What kinds of text does it support, as in, would it work for handwritten…
SiVal on HN
Linux or Windows equivalent
From 3 comments
Not a Mac user or developer, poking at the source code because I might be interested in building a Linux equivalent. Why is code so damn complicated these days? What does all…
dheera on HNThis looks super useful. Is there some equivalent for Windows? A quick search didn't yield anything useful.
Ennea on HNGreat project! This is one of those tools that solves a problem that's right in front of you. I can see this being built into screenshot software, just like mark-up tools are…
gitgud on HN
Questions
Does it work with pixel-perfect screen fonts
From 1 comment
Very nice. Does this work with screen fonts / pixel perfect fonts too? That'd be my biggest gripe with all the OCR tools: what looks like the simplest fonts of them all to OCR…
TacticalCoder on HN
How does it compare to Tesseract
From 1 comment
I had no idea that macOS/iOS now had built in OCR! Any idea on how this compares to tessaract (or other local OCR). I currently have an Alfred workflow that invokes tessaract and…
upbeat_general on HN
Alternatives named
TextSniper
From 2 comments
There is an app called Text Sniper which works really well and is available on SetApp. I use it constantly and love it.
replwoacause on HNFor folks looking for something like this in an app store, I think I found TextSniper here on HN last August, and it's also in the great alt app store "SetApp" collection:…
Terretta on HN
Project Naptha
From 1 comment
https://antimatter15.com/project/project-naptha/ https://projectnaptha.com/ We had this fully client-side in the browser all the way back in 2013.
maven29 on HN
TRex
From 1 comment
Very nice! I'm currently using https://github.com/amebalabs/TRex for the same purpose.
apetrovic on HN
Screenotate
From 2 comments
Very nice. I've been using https://screenotate.com/ for years in part because of the nice OCR support
jbackus on HNHere's another one: https://screenotate.com/
unicornporn on HN
OwlOCR
From 2 comments
I tried a bunch of different solutions but found OwlOCR to be the one with the best result. https://owlocr.com/ I'll keep an eye on this one too though!
filt on HNFor folks looking for something like this in an app store, I think I found TextSniper here on HN last August, and it's also in the great alt app store "SetApp" collection:…
Terretta on HN