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How to Copy Text from an Image in Slack on Mac

By Eduard Bruch, developer of Optic · Updated

To copy text from a screenshot in Slack on a Mac, either open the image in Preview and select the text with Live Text, or drag over it right inside Slack with a screen OCR app. The first costs nothing; the second skips the download step.

Short answer: for the occasional image, download it and use Live Text in Preview. If you do this every day, my pick is Optic, a menu bar app that copies the text in any area you drag across the screen ($4.99, a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store).

Disclosure: I build Optic.

The problem

A teammate drops a screenshot into a channel: a terminal error, a config panel, a dashboard, a block of code. You need the text in it, to search the error, to quote a number, to run the code. In the Slack window, though, the screenshot is a picture, and you cannot select the words in it the way you select a normal message. So you retype it, or you ask the sender to paste it as text and wait.

Option 1: download and use Live Text

macOS Live Text works where Apple supports it: images in Preview, Photos, Quick Look and Safari. It does not work on arbitrary app windows, video calls or UI text. So the built-in route for a Slack screenshot is:

  1. Download the image from Slack.
  2. Open it in Preview (or select it in Finder and press Space for Quick Look).
  3. Select the text with the pointer and copy it with Command-C.

This works well for a single image. It gets tedious when screenshots come in all day, because each one means a download and a detour through Finder.

Option 2: copy straight from Slack with Optic

Optic reads whatever is on screen, so the screenshot can stay in Slack.

  1. Show the screenshot in Slack, either inline in the channel or opened full size.
  2. Click the Optic icon in the menu bar and choose Capture Text.
  3. Drag a box over the text you want.
  4. Paste with Command-V into your browser, editor or reply.

A small "Copied to clipboard" confirmation appears, with an optional sound. Recognition runs on the Mac with Apple's Vision framework, and Optic has no network access, so the screenshot content never leaves your computer. That matters for internal logs and dashboards.

Typical cases

  • Error messages. Grab the exact error string and paste it into a search engine or your log tool instead of retyping a long line by hand.
  • Code. For screenshots of code, switch on Code mode in Settings. It keeps each line's indentation and turns off language correction, so identifiers are not "fixed" into English words. More in OCR code snippets on Mac.
  • Numbers from dashboards. Drag over just the figures you need and paste them into a spreadsheet or report. Selecting a small area is often cleaner than copying a whole screenshot.
  • Text that wraps. Settings let you keep line breaks (default), remove them, or use Smart merge, which joins wrapped lines but keeps sentence ends.

Your last 20 captures stay in the menu bar history, so if you need the same error again an hour later, you can copy it again without finding the screenshot.

Where Optic does not fit

  • No file import. It reads what is on screen; it does not open saved images or PDFs.
  • No batch processing. One drag gives one capture. For many images at once, see batch OCR screenshots on Mac.
  • No table extraction. Rows and columns come out as text lines, not as cells.
  • Handwriting. Photos of whiteboard notes are not something Optic promises to read.
  • Check the result. OCR is very good on clean screenshots but small or blurry text can produce errors, so look over what you paste, especially in code.

FAQ

How do I copy text from a screenshot in Slack?

Download it and open it in Preview to use Live Text, or keep it open in Slack and drag over the text with a screen OCR app like Optic, then paste with Command-V.

Can I copy text from a Slack image without downloading it?

Yes, with a screen OCR app. Optic reads the image where it is shown in the Slack window.

Does Optic send Slack screenshots to a server?

No. Optic has no network access; recognition runs on your Mac and the history is stored locally.

Does it work in the Slack web app too?

Yes. Optic reads the screen, so it does not matter whether Slack runs as the Mac app or in a browser.

Get Optic on the Mac App Store · All Optic facts. Optic needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later. See also how to copy text from the screen on Mac.