Select
Press ⌘ ⇧ 2 then drag over any text on your screen.
Stop retyping
text from
your screen
PeekText instantly reads text from videos, PDFs, and images. Ready for you to paste and move on.
How it works
Three Simple Steps.
Instant Clarity.
Grab text from anywhere on your screen in three quick steps. Then paste and move on.
Extract
PeekText instantly reads it for you. No waiting.
Paste
The text is copied. Use it anywhere.
Works everywhere
Capture text from anything on your screen.
Screenshots
PDFs
Videos
Scans
Remote desktops
Images
Speed Proof
Text captured before
you finish dragging.
No upload. No delay. Everything happens locally on your Mac.
Typing manually
10.47s
VS
PeekText
0.43s
Built for real workflows
Capture once.
Use anywhere.
Works across screenshots, PDFs, videos, scans, and anything else on your screen.
Built for real workflows
PeekText is not just about capturing text. It is built to help you keep moving after the capture.
Capture Shelf
Review, edit, clean up, and reuse every capture in one place.
Undo, redo, copy, export, recent history
Recent Captures
Rotation support
Capture text even when it is sideways or upside down.
0°, 90°, 180°, 270°
QR & barcode scan
Extract links, codes, and embedded data directly from your screen.
QR codes, barcodes, URLs
Multi-language OCR
Capture text across multiple writing systems, not just English.
English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and more
Why PeekText?
Built different.
On purpose.
PeekText respects your time
and your data.
PeekText
Text copied to clipboard✅
Just like that.
Private by design
Everything stays on your Mac. No uploads. No tracking. No compromises.
Instant extraction
Grab text in a blink. No menus. No waiting. Just select and go.
Works everywhere
From PDFs to videos, screenshots to remote desktops. If you can see it, PeekText can read it.
Offline by default
No internet? No problem. PeekText is always ready. 100% offline.
Fits into your workflow
Works where you work.
Capture text from anything on your screen, then paste it into the tools you already use.
On your screen
PDFs, screenshots, videos, scans
Into your notes
Docs, writing, research, references
Into your work
Slack, email, tasks, forms
Into your code
Editors, terminals, logs, demos
Stop retyping.
Start extracting.
PeekText grabs any text on your screen.
Instantly. Privately. Effortlessly.
Free
Offline
No signup
Deep work is a superpower.
In a world of constant distraction,
focus is your unfair advantage.
Copied⌘⇧2
BI
Deep work is a superpower.
In a world of constant distraction,
focus is your unfair advantage.
Frequently Asked
Questions
Clear answers to the most important questions before you download PeekText.
PeekText is a macOS OCR app that lets you capture text from anything visible on your screen and copy it instantly. It is built for fast, native text capture without the friction of manual retyping.
Launch PeekText with the shortcut, drag over the text you want, and the extracted text is copied so you can paste it anywhere. The workflow is designed to be quick, simple, and native to macOS.
PeekText can extract text from screenshots, images, PDFs, videos, presentations, web pages, scanned documents, remote desktops, and other visible on-screen content.
Yes. PeekText runs locally on your Mac, so you can extract text without needing an internet connection.
PeekText is built for privacy. Your captured text and on-screen selections stay on your device, and PeekText does not rely on cloud OCR for normal use.
PeekText is highly reliable for clear on-screen text. Accuracy depends on factors such as font size, image quality, contrast, blur, and how distorted the text appears.
Yes. PeekText supports OCR for multiple languages, making it useful for multilingual documents, screenshots, and other visual content.
Yes. PeekText is designed to handle text at different angles and can often read text that would be tedious to capture manually, though results still depend on clarity and image quality.
PeekText supports macOS 12 Monterey or later and is built to feel fast, lightweight, and native on modern Macs.
PeekText may request the macOS permissions needed to trigger capture workflows smoothly and work properly across your screen. These permissions support the app’s core functionality on Mac.
PeekText is built as a fast, privacy-focused macOS OCR tool for capturing text from real on-screen workflows like PDFs, videos, scans, screenshots, and more. It focuses on a clean native experience and local-first text capture.
Apple Live Text is useful in limited contexts, but PeekText is built as a dedicated capture workflow for quickly extracting text from a wider range of on-screen content with a shortcut-driven experience.