snip-ocr

A lightweight utility to snip any region of your screen, extract its text using OCR, and copy it directly to your clipboard.

Why this

• Built on PyTesseract (Tesseract OCR) for enhanced text extraction quality
• In practice, its accuracy is often better than the built‑in Snipping OCR available via Microsoft PowerToys

Requirements

• Python 3.9+ (Windows)
• System dependency:
  • Tesseract OCR installed on Windows (e.g., C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR)
• Python packages:
  • pyautogui
  • pytesseract
  • pillow
  • pyperclip
  • tkinter (bundled with standard Python on Windows)

Install packages:

pip install pyautogui pytesseract pillow pyperclip

If Tesseract is not on PATH, set in code (already present in main.py):

pytesseract.pytesseract.tesseract_cmd = r'C:\\Program Files\\Tesseract-OCR\\tesseract'

Usage

python main.py

• A small window appears with two buttons: green to start snipping, red to close.
• Click green, select a region; extracted text is copied to the clipboard and the window reappears with a status message.

Build an EXE (optional)

Use PyInstaller to create a standalone executable for local use:

pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller --onefile --windowed main.py

Your executable will be in the dist/ folder.

Screenshots

After running the code, it gives you the option to start the snip.

This is what the snip interface looks like.

License

Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE.

Keywords

snip-ocr, screen ocr, screenshot to text, tesseract, pytesseract, pyautogui, clipboard, text extraction, windows ocr, tkinter ocr, snipping tool alternative, copy text from screen, OCR utility, python ocr, offline ocr