Here is a macOS Shortcut to take a screenshot and extract text from it using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). I find this useful to copy text from e.g. a presentation or video during a virtual call, etc.
Of course, macOS Monterey also supports Live Text in apps like Photos, Screenshot, Quick Look and Safari. However, this method is just a bit quicker, if all you need is to copy text from an app without having to save a screenshot first.
Each action takes the input from the one before:
- Take an interactive screenshot of a portion of the screen,
- Extract text from the screenshot (works off-line too),
- Allow user to choose a subset of recognized text to copy - this step is optional, feel free to delete it for a totally automated process,
- Combine to selected items into a single string (rather than a list object),
- Copy the selected string to the clipboard.
