Guides
Step-by-step answers for the places where text gets stuck, with the free macOS way where there is one and where it stops working.
Copy text from anything
Videos, meetings, images, PDFs, apps and other places where text can’t be selected.
- Copy text from a video
- Copy text from a YouTube video
- Copy subtitles from a video
- Copy code from a video tutorial
- Copy text from a slide
- Copy text from a Zoom screen share
- Copy text from a Teams meeting
- Copy text from a Google Meet presentation
- Copy text from an image
- Copy text from a screenshot
- Copy text from an Instagram photo
- Copy text from a scanned PDF
- Copy numbers from a chart
- Copy handwritten notes
- Copy an error message you can’t select
- Copy text from an app that won’t let you select it
- Copy text from a notification
- Copy text from a web page that blocks selecting
- Copy text from Figma
- Copy text from a remote desktop
- Copy text from iPhone Mirroring
- Copy text from a game
- Copy details from a business card
Text in other languages
Copyable detects the language by itself. These are the languages it reads on every macOS version it supports; newer macOS versions read more.
- English text recognition on Mac
- Spanish text recognition on Mac
- German text recognition on Mac
- French text recognition on Mac
- Italian text recognition on Mac
- Portuguese text recognition on Mac
- Chinese (Simplified) text recognition on Mac
- Chinese (Traditional) text recognition on Mac
- Japanese text recognition on Mac
- Korean text recognition on Mac
- Ukrainian text recognition on Mac
- Russian text recognition on Mac
Tables to spreadsheets
Switch to Table before you drag, and paste the result as cells, CSV or Markdown.
QR codes and translation
QR codes and barcodes on screen, and on-device translation on macOS 15 and later.