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Mac Live Text Limitations: Where It Works and Where It Stops

By Eduard Bruch, developer of Optic · Updated

Live Text is Apple's built-in text recognition. On a Mac it lets you select and copy text in images in Preview, Photos, Quick Look and Safari, and in paused video frames in some players. It does not work on arbitrary app windows, video calls or UI text, which is where many people run into its limits.

Short answer: use Live Text whenever it works, since it is free and built in. For everything else on screen, 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.

Where Live Text works well

Live Text is good at what it was designed for: text inside images in Apple's own apps.

  • Preview: open a photo, screenshot or image file and select text with the cursor.
  • Photos: pictures of signs, documents and whiteboards.
  • Quick Look: press Space on an image in Finder and select text in the preview.
  • Safari: many images on web pages.
  • Paused video: in some players, on a paused frame.

If your text is in one of those places, try Live Text first. It needs no setup.

Where it stops

Live Text works on images in supported apps. That leaves a lot of the screen out of reach:

  • App interfaces and dialogs. Labels, buttons, error messages and sidebars in apps are not images Live Text can read. See copy an error message from a dialog on Mac.
  • Video calls and screen shares. A slide shared in a call is not an image in Preview or Photos.
  • Web apps that draw text themselves. Dashboards and tools that render text as graphics often do not offer a Live Text selection.
  • Images inside other apps. A picture in a chat app or a design tool may need to be saved and opened in Preview first.
  • No memory. Live Text copies to the clipboard, and that is it. There is no list of what you copied earlier.

None of this is a flaw in Live Text so much as its scope: it was built for images, not for the whole screen.

The workaround with built-ins

For text outside Live Text's reach, you can take a screenshot with Shift-Command-4, open it in Preview, and use Live Text on the screenshot. It works, but each capture is several steps and leaves a file behind.

Screen-level OCR with Optic

Optic reads text from the screen itself, inside a box you draw, regardless of which app shows it.

  1. Click the Optic icon in the menu bar.
  2. Choose Capture Text (or Capture QR Code for a code).
  3. Drag a box over the text.
  4. Paste with Command-V.

Like Live Text, it uses Apple's Vision framework on your Mac, so recognition happens locally and the app has no network access. What it adds is scope and a few tools around the result:

  • Any visible text: app labels, dialogs, shared slides, web app canvases, paused videos.
  • History: the last 20 captures with thumbnails, stored locally, to copy again or open a link.
  • Read aloud: any capture in the history can be spoken with the macOS voices. More: read text aloud from the screen on Mac and text to speech from the screen.
  • Code mode and line-break options: keep indentation, or merge wrapped lines into sentences.
  • QR and 2D codes: QR, Micro QR, Aztec, Data Matrix and PDF417 on screen.

Where Optic does not fit

  • It does not open files. Unlike Preview, it cannot open an image or PDF; the content must be on screen.
  • One area at a time. No folder processing and no searchable PDFs.
  • No translation and no table extraction.
  • No 1D barcodes like EAN or UPC.
  • Handwriting is not a promised feature.

If Live Text covers your needs, keep using it. If you keep hitting the cases above, see screen OCR apps for Mac compared and copy text from anywhere on your Mac screen.

FAQ

Why is Live Text not working on my Mac?

Live Text only works in supported places, mainly images in Preview, Photos, Quick Look and Safari. It does not read app windows, dialogs or video calls. Check that it is turned on in your language settings.

Can Live Text copy text from any app?

No. It works on images in supported apps, not on arbitrary windows or UI text.

Does Live Text work on videos on Mac?

On paused frames in some players, yes. Otherwise, pause and use a screen OCR app.

Is there an alternative to Live Text for the whole screen?

Yes. Screen OCR apps read text from any screen area you select. My pick is Optic (I build it); TextSniper, TRex, Shottr and CleanShot X do the same job with different extras. Compared: best screen OCR apps for Mac.

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