You're looking at text on your screen. You need that text somewhere else. But you can't select it.
It happens more than you'd think:
- A screenshot with important numbers or addresses
- A PDF where the text layer is missing or broken
- An error message inside a video or screen recording
- A design mockup in Figma or Sketch
- A locked web element that blocks copy-paste
- An old scanned document
macOS Live Text (And Its Limits)
macOS has had built-in text recognition since Monterey. In Photos, Quick Look, and Safari, you can hover over an image and select text directly. It works well in those specific contexts.
The problem: it only works where Apple has explicitly enabled it. Open a random window, a web app, a game, a design tool, or anything outside Apple's apps — and Live Text does nothing. You're back to typing.
Ghost Text: OCR for Your Entire Screen
Ghost Text is a macOS utility that brings text recognition to literally every pixel on your screen.
Press CMD+Shift+2, drag a selection over any region, and the text inside is instantly recognized and copied to your clipboard. Paste it wherever you need it.
What makes it different
It's 100% offline. Ghost Text uses Apple's Vision framework — the same engine that powers Live Text — but applies it to any screen region on demand. Nothing is sent to a server. There's no account to create, no API key, no usage limit.
It's fast. Recognition completes in under a second for most text. The result is in your clipboard before you've even let go of the mouse.
It has clipboard history. Every piece of text you've captured is saved in Ghost Text's history. Go back and retrieve something you captured earlier without having to re-scan.
Common Use Cases
Code from screenshots Stack Overflow answers, GitHub issues, tutorial screenshots — paste the code directly instead of retyping it character by character.
Text from PDFs with broken text layers Some PDFs are just images of pages. Ghost Text reads them as if they were real text.
Error messages from videos or screen recordings Pause the video, capture the error text, paste it into Google. Done.
Data from images and mockups Phone numbers, addresses, prices, product names — anything visible is capturable.
Locked UI elements Some apps prevent text selection by design. Ghost Text doesn't care. If it's on your screen, it can read it.
Setup
1. Download Ghost Text from ghosttext.app 2. Open it — it lives in your menu bar 3. Set your preferred shortcut (default: CMD+Shift+2) 4. Start capturing
Price: $4.99 one-time, all updates included. macOS: 12.0 and later.
The Alternative: Typing It Out
Yes, you can still type everything manually. But at some point, the seconds add up — and Ghost Text is a $4.99 fix you'll use multiple times a week for as long as you use a Mac.