How to Copy Text from Any Screenshot with CleanShot X
I use CleanShot X's OCR to grab text from screenshares, error messages, and locked PDFs without retyping. Select the text on screen, and it copies to your clipboard. Simple, but it saves more time than you'd expect.
You're on a screenshare. Someone shows their Jira board with a ticket link you need. You could ask them to paste it in chat, interrupt the flow, wait for them to find it again. Or you could screenshot it and have the text in your clipboard instantly.
CleanShot X has an OCR feature that extracts text from anything on your screen. Not a screenshot of text, the actual text, ready to paste. I use it constantly.
The obvious use is error messages. A developer shares their screen showing a stack trace, you OCR it while they're still talking, paste it straight into the bug ticket. No transcription errors, no asking them to slow down, no "can you send me that?"
But the one that changed my workflow was URLs from screenshares. Someone's presenting, they open a page you want to reference later, the URL is right there in their browser bar. Screenshot it with OCR, paste it into your notes, keep watching. Before this, I'd either interrupt to ask for the link or try to remember to follow up afterwards. Neither worked well.
It also handles things that shouldn't need a workaround but do. Locked PDFs that disable text selection. Text baked into images. Content in tools that don't let you copy from certain fields. OCR bypasses all of it.
The setup is straightforward. In CleanShot preferences, assign a shortcut to "Capture Area - OCR". I use Cmd+Shift+2. Press the shortcut, drag over the text, and it's in your clipboard. No image saved, no extra steps. If you haven't set up a shortcut yet, you can also access it from the CleanShot menu bar icon, just click it and select "Capture Text (OCR)" from the dropdown.
One thing to know: it struggles with stylised fonts, very small text, and low-contrast colour combinations. If you get garbled output, try zooming in on the source first.
I use this multiple times a day. Hope it's useful.
