How to OCR an image on a Mac with Preview
- Open the image in Preview. A photo, a screenshot or a scan that shows text[1].
- Select the text. Hold the pointer over the text and drag across it. If nothing selects, choose Tools, Text Selection[1].
- Control-click and choose Copy Text. Paste it into another document or app[1].
The same menu offers Look Up, Translate and a web search for the selected words[1].
How to OCR a scanned PDF on a Mac
Preview can recognize text in an image based PDF, such as a scan or a picture of a document, and embed it. Open the PDF, choose File, Export and select Embed Text, and the text can then be selected in any PDF viewer[2]. Apple notes that the option only appears if no text was recognized in the document before[2].
The result is a searchable PDF. The page is still a picture with a text layer behind it, so you can copy and search, but not change a table or a paragraph. For that, convert the scan to Word. See OCR PDF to Word.
Free OCR options for Mac
| Option | Works on | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Live Text in Preview | Photos and images opened in Preview[1] | Selected text copied to the clipboard[1] |
| Preview, Embed Text | Image based PDFs with no text yet[2] | A PDF with selectable text[2] |
| Google Drive in the browser | PDFs and JPEG, PNG or GIF photos of 2 MB or smaller[3] | A Google Doc. Lists, tables and columns are not likely to be detected[3] |
| LoreAI free OCR in the browser | JPG, PNG, WEBP, HEIC or a one-page PDF up to 5 MB, 1 free run a day with no account, 10 with a free one | The whole page as text, a .txt file or a Word file with tables |
Live Text is quick for a phone number or a paragraph. When you want the whole page at once, in reading order and with its table intact, upload it above.
Which languages can a Mac read?
Live Text on a Mac works in a short list of languages. Apple's macOS feature availability page, checked on November 5, 2026, lists Live Text for Chinese, Cantonese, English, French, German, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese[4]. Spanish, Korean, Russian, Arabic and Hebrew are not on that list.
The OCR on this page reads those languages too, Arabic and Hebrew from right to left. See Arabic OCR, Hebrew OCR, Korean OCR and Russian OCR.
From a scan on your Mac to a Word file in English
For a document of several pages, use the LoreAI app. It reads every page of a PDF, JPG or PNG, stamps and handwriting included, and returns one editable Word file with headings, lists and tables. It can also translate the document into one of 105 languages in the same step. Your first document is free, up to 3 pages and 3 MB.
Questions people ask
Does a Mac have built-in OCR?
What is the best free OCR for Mac?
Preview for a line or two, because it is already on your Mac. For a full page you want in Word with its tables, the free OCR on this page, which runs in Safari or Chrome.
How do I copy text from an image on a Mac?
Open it in Preview, drag across the text, Control-click and choose Copy Text[1].
Can I OCR a PDF on a Mac without Adobe Acrobat?
Yes. Use Preview's File, Export, Embed Text for a searchable PDF[2], or the box on this page for a Word file.
Sources
- Apple Preview User Guide: Interact with text in a photo using Live Text in Preview on Mac, accessed November 5, 2026
- Apple Preview User Guide: Embed text in a PDF, accessed November 5, 2026
- Google Drive Help: Convert PDF and photo files to text, accessed November 5, 2026
- Apple: macOS Feature Availability, accessed November 5, 2026
By Matt Mountain ·